THE DEEPMIND

BREAKTHROUGH THAT
WILL TRANSFORM BIOLOGY
CAN A NEW KIND OF
VACCINE FINALLY
END THE PANDEMIC?
THE HUNT FOR HIDDEN
ASTEROID CRATERS
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This week’s issue

On the 10 The DeepMind

breakthrough that
40 Feature
cover will transform biology “People say
40 Secrets of the world’s 16 Can a new kind of vaccine the first half
first civilisations finally end the pandemic?
How AI is decoding the of human
lost stories of ancient
Mesopotamia
45 The hunt for hidden
asteroid craters history
is only
recorded
12 The search for the oldest galaxy in these
37 Why we love scary films
Vol 255 No 3398 15 Do microclots cause tablets”
Cover image: Julia Geiser chronic fatigue?

News Features
9 Monkeypox deaths 40 Cracking the code
First fatalities outside Africa News AI is helping us decipher
reported in current outbreak incredible stories from
ancient Mesopotamia
18 Dirty bomb
How fraudsters in US could 45 Blasts from the past
obtain radioactive material Ludovic Ferrière on searching
for undiscovered craters
22 Asylum seekers from asteroids
UK committee set to
recommend flawed 48 Rio, bravo
methods for estimating ages How children are key to fighting
infectious disease in Brazil

Views
The back pages
29 Comment
A public information campaign 52 Maker
about the climate crisis is much Ferment your own hot sauce
needed, says Bill McGuire
53 Puzzles
30 The columnist Try our crossword, quick quiz
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein and logic puzzle
tackles space-time
54 Almost the last word
32 Aperture How might space have gone
Mysterious creatures from the from finite to infinite?
bottom of the Pacific Ocean
56 Feedback
PS50ACE/GETTY IMAGES

34 Letters Why roboticists find dead spiders

We must prepare for future AIs truly gripping

36 Culture 56 Twisteddoodles
The challenge of returning lost for New Scientist
species to ecosystems 21 Bird tracking Tiny tags give us detailed insights on migration Picturing the lighter side of life

6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 3

 Elsewhere
on New Scientist
Newsletter
Extreme weather What can COP27 do to tackle climate change?
Podcast
Doctor, doctor Chimps treat each other with medicinal insects
Tour
Neanderthal Origins:
Southern France
Step back in time to key
Neanderthal sites with
archaeologist Rebecca Wragg
Sykes. See the oldest traces left
by archaic humans, including
stone tools and cave paintings.
newscientist.com/tours
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This week’s episode was
recorded live at Bluedot music
festival. The team discuss
extraterrestrial life, reveal
news of chimp doctors and
chat about how they would use
$100 million to save the world.
newscientist.com/nspod
4 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
A note from
the editor
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Dear reader,
This is just to let you know – in case you have missed the
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and being bowled over by it. For details of our early-bird ticket
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So, to this issue of our magazine. Our feature on cuneiform
(see page 40) is one of my favourite cover stories so far this
year. As part of the research for it, my colleague Alison George
and I had the most enormous privilege of being allowed
behind the scenes at the British Museum in London, where
we got to inspect its vast collection of ancient clay tablets
Newsletter from Mesopotamia. Thank you to renowned cuneiform
expert Irving Finkel for that visit; it was inspirational.
Fix the Planet Another leading expert in this field is Enrique Jiménez,
After a sweltering few weeks, who also features heavily in our story (for which we owe him
senior reporter Adam Vaughan many, many thanks). He has provided these words, written
analyses the possible in cuneiform, below. If you can decipher them, email me at
outcomes of the upcoming editor@newscientist.com with your address and what you
COP27 conference, our next think they say. We will pick some winners out of a hat and send
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newscientist.com/fix All the best to you all,
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Ancient art Can you decipher this?
Join reporter Alice Klein on her
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Australia to see an incredible
collection of ancient rock art.
The area holds more than
2 million engravings.
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The leader
Biology’s cup runneth over
AI can now reliably predict crucial information on vast numbers of proteins
“It has not escaped our notice...” With
those famous words published in 1953,
James Watson and Francis Crick described
the fundamental genetic significance of
the double-helix structure of DNA, based
on work by Rosalind Franklin. It was a
pivotal moment in biology, allowing us to
understand for the first time how living
organisms store the recipes for making
proteins – the molecular machines that do
most of the hard work in our bodies – and
pass them down the generations.
Another major step forward came in
2001, with the draft sequence of almost
the entire human genome. That revealed
the big picture, that we have around
20,000 recipes for proteins, but not the
detail of what they do. To fully understand
proteins requires knowing their three-
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dimensional structure. These can be
obtained experimentally, yet that is
often a very slow process. Alternatively,
computers can be used to try to predict
structures from the gene sequence
alone, but that used to be very difficult.
Used to be. In November 2020,
“Knowing protein structures can
transform medicine and perhaps
also food, farming and more”
Alphabet-owned DeepMind revealed that
AlphaFold, its AI system for predicting
protein structure, could accurately do this
for pretty much any protein from its gene
sequence. Now, it has released predicted
structures of nearly all the more than
200 million known proteins (see page 10).
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This is another huge step forward in
biology. Protein structures are never going
to get as much attention as, say, dramatic
images from space, but knowing them can
have a much greater impact on our lives,
transforming medicine and perhaps also
food, farming and synthetic biology.
While the Human Genome Project
rapidly transformed research, it was a
decade or so before it delivered practical
benefits like better treatments. We can
expect something similar with AlphaFold.
Much work remains to understand how
protein structures relate to their functions
and how proteins interact with each other
and with other molecules. The hope is that
this will now accelerate, hastening our
understanding of how life works at the
molecular level, of the universe within. ❚
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 News
Alien worlds Pobblebonk frogs
Telescope could let us Weird trick helps
glimpse exoplanets’ tadpoles survive
surfaces p13 acidic pools p14
WHO/LINDSAY MACKENZIE
Diseases
Monkeypox claims lives
The monkeypox outbreak’s death toll is rising, but knowledge
of symptoms is improving, reports Jason Arunn Murugesu
DEATHS due to monkeypox have
been reported outside Africa
for the first time in the current
outbreak. On 29 July, a 41-year-old
man from Brazil became the first
person known to have died from
the monkeypox virus outside the
African continent in 2022. Two
deaths in Spain were reported
soon after. India reported its first
monkeypox death, a 22-year-old
man, on 1 August. Five deaths have
been reported in Africa.
Monkeypox is typically a mild
disease and people tend to recover
within two to four weeks. But for
some people, particularly those
who are immunocompromised,
it can be fatal.
There have been 23,620
confirmed cases of the disease
Fraud detection
Technique reveals
when fingerprints
were made p14
globally as of 1 August, according
to the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
The vast majority of
monkeypox cases outside Africa
have been in men who have sex
with men (MSM). Meanwhile,
in Africa about 60 per cent of
cases this year have been male,
says Patrick Otim at the World
Health Organization.
Previous outbreaks of the
disease in Nigeria and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
have had fatality rates of 3 to 10.6
per cent, says Otim. But the fatality
rate of the current outbreak on the
continent, as of 26 July, appears to
be about 1 per cent, he says.
Although this figure is far
lower than previous outbreaks,
Voice jammer
Tech stops people
recording your
speech p15
it is a lot higher than the fatality
rate seen so far in the rest of the
world. “About four people have
died so far for 20,000 cases,” says
Paul Hunter at the University of
East Anglia in the UK. “That’s a
fatality rate of about 1 in 5000.”
“We need to ensure people
know what the disease
looks like and vaccinate
high-risk groups”
Hunter says that may be
due to the fact that about
20 to 40 per cent of MSM
groups in most countries are
HIV positive, but – unlike in
Africa – the large majority of
HIV positive people in the West
have easy access to antiretroviral
Not just bees
Moths play
important role
in pollination p18
WHO officials speak
at a press conference
on 23 July
therapy, so are less likely to be
immunocompromised.
Access to vaccines could be
another factor. The UK is aiming
to vaccinate all high-risk people in
MSM groups, healthcare workers
interacting with people with
monkeypox and those who have
been in close contact with
confirmed cases. France and New
York are using a similar strategy.
But this isn’t the case in
Africa. “Not a single dose of the
monkeypox vaccine has been
administered in Africa,” says Otim.
Hunter says the number of
deaths from the disease will
continue to rise this year, but it is
impossible to know how bad it will
get. Chloe Orkin at Queen Mary
University of London, who has
studied global cases of the disease,
estimates that 10 to 15 per cent of
people who catch monkeypox will
experience serious symptoms and
be hospitalised.
The rise in deaths comes as
researchers better characterise the
symptoms. A study published on
28 July based on 197 monkeypox
cases in the UK described
symptoms that hadn’t been
observed in previous outbreaks,
such as penile swelling, rectal
pain and single lesions (The BMJ,
doi.org/h6xc).
The UK Health Security
Agency updated its list of known
symptoms on 25 July. Orkin says
health bodies around the world
urgently need to do likewise.
Hunter says knowing the
symptoms is key to controlling
the outbreak. “We can bring
monkeypox under control by the
end of the year,” he says. “We need
to make sure people know what
the disease looks like, ask people
to moderate their behaviour
until they’ve been vaccinated
and vaccinate enough people
in the high-risk groups.” ❚
6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 9
News AlphaFold special report
Artificial intelligence
Huge protein breakthrough
AlphaFold, an AI created by UK firm DeepMind, has predicted the structure of
nearly all known proteins – a monumental feat, reports Matthew Sparkes
DEEPMIND has predicted
the structure of almost every
protein so far catalogued by
science, cracking one of the
grand challenges of biology in just
18 months thanks to an artificial
intelligence called AlphaFold.
Researchers say that the work
has already led to advances in
combating malaria, antibiotic
resistance and plastic waste,
and could speed up the
discovery of new drugs.
Reliably predicting the complex
shapes of proteins just from the
sequences of amino acids they
contain has been a challenge for
decades in biology. Some of these
amino acids are attracted to others,
some are repelled by water, and
the chains they form bend into
intricate shapes that are hard
to accurately decipher.
UK-based AI firm DeepMind,
which is owned by Alphabet,
Google’s parent company, first
announced it had developed a
method to accurately predict
the structure of folded proteins
in late 2020. By the middle of 2021,
it revealed that it had used this to
map 98.5 per cent of the proteins
in the human body.
On 28 July, the company
announced that it was publishing
the predicted structures of more
than 200 million proteins – nearly
all of those catalogued on the
globally recognised repository
of protein research, UniProt.
DeepMind has worked
with the European Molecular
Biology Laboratory’s European
Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-
EBI) to create a searchable store
of all this information that can
be easily and freely accessed by
researchers around the world.
Ewan Birney at EMBL-EBI calls the
The structure of
vitellogenin, an egg
yolk precursor protein
10 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
AlphaFold Protein Structure
Database “a gift to humanity”.
“As someone who’s been in
genomics and computational
biology since the 1990s, I’ve
seen many of these moments
come where you can sense
the landscape shifting under
you and the provision of new
resources, and this has been one
of the fastest,” he says. “I mean,
two years ago, we just simply did
not realise that this was feasible.”
Demis Hassabis, CEO of
DeepMind, says that the database
makes obtaining a predicted
protein structure “almost as easy
as doing a Google search”. That
contrasts with the years it can take
to get a structure experimentally.
The AI’s predictions have
already been used by scientists
to advance research in a number
of areas. Matt Higgins at the
University of Oxford and his
colleagues were researching a
protein that they believed was
key to interrupting the life cycle
of the malaria parasite, but were
struggling to map its structure.
“One of the experimental
methods that we use is X-ray
crystallography,” says Higgins.
“We cause the proteins to form
into lattices, fire X-rays at them
and get information from those
X-ray diffraction patterns to see
what the molecule looks like.
But we were never able, despite
many years of work, to see in
sufficient detail what this
molecule looks like.”
But when AlphaFold was
released, it gave a clear prediction
of the structure of the protein
“The database makes
finding a predicted protein
structure almost as easy
as doing a Google search”
that matched the information
the researchers had already been
able to glean. They have now
designed new proteins that they
hope could serve as an effective
malarial vaccine.
Birney says that using
X-ray crystallography to map the
structure of a protein is expensive
and time-consuming. “That
means that experimentalists have
to make choices about what they
do, and AlphaFold hasn’t had to
make choices,” he says. “I think
we can be confident that there
DEEPMIND
are new experiments and
new insights coming through
due to AlphaFold, which will
impact ‘how does this particular
parasite work’ or ‘why does this
particular disease happen in
humans’, for example.”
Researchers have also used
AlphaFold to engineer new
enzymes to break down plastic
waste and to learn more about
the proteins that make bacteria
resistant to antibiotics.
Keith Willison at Imperial
College London says that
AlphaFold has unarguably
“changed the world” of
biological research, but that
there are still problems to be
solved in protein folding.
“As soon as AlphaFold came
out, it was wonderful. You just take
your favourite proteins and look
them up now, rather than having
to make crystals,” he says. “I did
the crystallographic structure of
a protein complex – it took me
about eight years. People are
joking that crystallographers
are going to be unemployed.”
But Willison points out that
AlphaFold isn’t able to take any
arbitrary string of amino acids
and model exactly how it folds.
Instead, it is only able to use parts
of proteins and their structures
that have been experimentally
determined to predict how a
new protein will fold.
While the tool is usually,
extremely accurate, its
structures are always predictions
rather than explicitly calculated
results. Nor has AlphaFold yet
solved the complex interactions
that occur between proteins,
or even made a dent in a small
subset of structures, known as
intrinsically disordered proteins,
that seem to have unstable and
unpredictable folding patterns.
“Once you discover one thing,
then there are more problems

thrown up,” says Willison. “It’s
quite terrifying, actually, how
complicated biology is.”
Tomek Wlodarski at University
College London says that
AlphaFold has had an enormous
impact on many areas of biology,
but that there are improvements
to be made on accuracy, and that
developing a model of how
proteins fold – not just predicting
their final structure – is a problem
that DeepMind is yet to tackle.
Wlodarski says AlphaFold isn’t
perfect, although it does indicate
which parts of a prediction have
a high accuracy and which it is
less confident in.
“We introduced a mutation,
which we know experimentally
completely unfolds the protein,
but AlphaFold gave me the same
structure as it gave without this
mutation,” he says. “I did another
test: I was removing residues from
one end of the protein, because we
know that with our protein, if you
chop nine residues from one of
the ends it will completely unfold
the protein. And I managed to
chop half of the protein sequence,
and the algorithm still predicted
it as a completely folded protein
with exactly the same structure.
So there are these problems.”
Pushmeet Kohli, who leads
DeepMind’s scientific team, says
that the company isn’t done with
proteins yet and is working to
improve the accuracy and
capabilities of AlphaFold.
“We know the static structure
of proteins, but that’s not where
the game ends,” he says. ‘We want
to understand how these proteins
behave, what their dynamics are,
how they interact with other
proteins. Then there’s the other
area of genomics where we want
to understand how the recipe of
life translates into which proteins
are created, when are they created
and the working of a cell.” ❚
Analysis Biochemistry
Why AlphaFold is transformational Understanding the
complex structures of proteins is key to developing drugs
and knowing how living things work, says Michael Le Page
TO UNDERSTAND life, we need to Kinesins (illustrated in orange)
understand proteins. Living things are proteins that transport cargo
are molecular machines and most inside cells by ‘walking’ along
of the key components are made microtubules. Their structure
of proteins. You are reading this helps us understand them
article, for instance, with proteins
in your retina that can detect light, especially valuable for developing
SHUTTERSTOCK/KATERYNA KON
various proteins that make your drugs. Most drugs work by binding
muscles move and so on. to specific parts of proteins. This
In one way, proteins are simple. binding happens where part of the
They are made of chains that can drug fits into part of the protein’s
contain up to 20 different amino structure, like a 3D jigsaw puzzle.
acids. The sequence of amino If you know the protein structure,
acids in a chain is determined you can design drugs to fit, rather
by the gene coding for a protein. protein in minutes, thanks to the than relying on trial and error.
Thanks to the cheap genome database of over 200 million such
sequencing ushered in by the structures released by DeepMind.
Human Genome Project, we now The protein structures and Treasure trove
know the amino acid sequences open-source tools previously It is worth noting that DeepMind
of hundreds of millions of proteins released by DeepMind have has made its database of protein
found in viruses, bacteria, fungi, already accelerated many areas structures freely available. It could
plants and animals. of research. Already, more than have chosen to follow a similar
In most cases, however, we still 100 studies citing AlphaFold, its route to Celera, the company that
don’t have a clue what most of protein structure-predicting AI, tried to sequence the human
these proteins do or how they do are being released each month. genome before the publicly
it. Techniques such as deleting For instance, nuclear funded project so it could
a gene using CRISPR and seeing pores control the transport of commercialise the data. It isn’t
its impact on an organism can molecules into and out of the clear if or how DeepMind intends
give us a good idea of what a DNA-containing nucleus of a cell. to make money from AlphaFold,
protein does, but for the how, These pores are made of more but what is clear is that the
we need to work out a protein’s than 1000 proteins and were treasure trove of structures it has
shape, or structure. poorly understood. But within released will greatly accelerate
months of the initial release of many areas of research.
AlphaFold, researchers published That said, it would be
Folded chains a much improved model of the wrong to suggest the problem of
Take kinesins, the cell’s beasts human nuclear pore. determining protein structure is
of burden. These extraordinary Knowing protein structure is completely solved. The accuracy
proteins “walk” along cellular of AlphaFold’s predictions vary,
structures known as microtubules and for drug development in
with two stubby “legs”, pulling
along cargoes attached to the
other end of the protein. You just
180k
Proteins whose structures have
particular, accuracy really matters.
And as with the Human
Genome Project, it is likely to take
can’t understand them without been found experimentally many years before the advances
knowing their structures. made with the help of AlphaFold
The problem is that a simple
amino acid chain could, in theory,
fold up into a vast number of
200m
Protein structures that have
result in treatments and products
that benefit people directly.
But we have made far more
different structures. In the past, been predicted by AlphaFold progress in solving one of the
determining the 3D structure of toughest problems in science (see
a single protein experimentally
could take many years. Now,
biologists can look at the predicted
100
Number of studies citing
article left) than most researchers
imagined was possible two years
ago. Biology will never be the
structure of almost any known AlphaFold released per month same again. ❚
6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 11
News James Webb Space Telescope
Distant galaxies
The race for the furthest galaxy
The James Webb Space Telescope keeps breaking its own record for the most
distant galaxy ever found, reports Leah Crane
AS THE James Webb Space
Telescope (JWST) has begun
sending back its first science
data, researchers around the
world have reported new galaxies,
each more distant than the last.
The distance to a cosmic object
is denoted by what is known as
redshift. This works a bit like
the Doppler effect, in which a
sound seems to change in pitch
depending on whether it is
moving towards or away from
the listener. The faster a galaxy
is moving away from the Milky
Way, the higher its redshift – and
because of the expansion of the
universe, the more distant a
galaxy is, the faster it moves away
from us and the redder it looks.
We knew JWST would spot
incredibly distant objects, with
correspondingly high redshifts,
but the immediate cascade of
such distant galaxies it has
revealed was surprising to many
astronomers. “I don’t think any
of us really expected to see quite
NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI
this many sources at such high
redshifts,” says Guido Roberts-
Borsani at the University of
California, Los Angeles. “We all
expected to be surprised in some
way or another, but not so quickly
or so drastically.”
Before JWST, the most distant
object spotted had a redshift
of about 11, meaning it formed
within about 400 million years
of the big bang. JWST has now
been used to identify several
galaxies with apparent redshifts
of 13 and even higher, meaning
they formed within 300 million
years of the big bang (arxiv.org/
abs/2207.12474).
So far, we don’t know much
about these galaxies, and most
of their redshifts haven’t yet been
A grouping of galaxies
called Stephan’s Quintet
as seen by JWST
12 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
confirmed. “Right now, we’re just
grabbing all the fruit. We still have
to figure out which are the good
ones and which are the rotten
ones, but right now, it’s just
gimme gimme gimme,” says
Jane Rigby at NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Center in Maryland.
“We’re still in the initial harvest
stage, and we don’t really know
what’s important yet.”
“We all expected to be
surprised in some way
or another, but not so
quickly or so drastically”
“It’s really quite an amazing
mess right now, but it’s been this
sudden lurch forward and then
we’ll take some time and take a
breath,” says Rohan Naidu at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics. After a whirlwind
of new findings, the tough task
of double-checking everything
will begin, generally by taking
more detailed measurements
of the objects’ light in a process
called spectroscopy.
That will be particularly
important for the most distant
candidates. For example, a team
led by Haojing Yan at the University
of Missouri claims to have found
a galaxy at a redshift of 20, so it
would have to have formed within
180 million years of the big bang –
far earlier than we expect galaxy
formation to have begun (arxiv.
org/abs/2207.11558).
“Our results are completely
unexpected and are at odds
with all previously favoured
predictions,” says Yan, who
declined to comment on the
details of his team’s work before
it is peer-reviewed.
“That, essentially, would break
galaxy evolution,” says Roberts-
Borsani. If there really is a galaxy
at a redshift of 20, it could mean
that we have deeply
misunderstood the physics
of galaxy and star formation
in the early universe.
“The capabilities of Webb
are such that it could observe
a redshift-20 thing if it were
there, but there’s a lot of
scepticism whether it could
be there,” says Nathan Adams
at the University of Manchester
in the UK. “Something that
extreme needs a closer look and
validation from multiple people.”
How did it all begin?
It might take a while to get that
closer look. JWST’s schedule is
booked far in advance, and so
is the other telescope big enough
to do the necessary spectroscopy,
the Atacama Large Millimeter/
submillimeter Array in Chile. So
unless researchers can convince
the directors of those telescopes
to let them skip the queue, these
observations will have to wait.
Even before the necessary
checks, it is clear that there are
at least some galaxies that are
brighter and more distant than
expected. “If even 20 per cent
of the galaxies reported in the
last week turn out to be at the
redshifts that they are reported
to be at, it’s strong evidence that
these things form very early
and very quickly, and get very
massive and very bright very
early,” says Naidu.
Once we know which of these
galaxies are real and formed in
the extremely early universe, we
can start studying them in more
detail. “In the big picture, we’re
asking, how did it all get started?”
says Rigby. “How quickly do
galaxies stop being boring places
of just hydrogen, helium and dark
matter and start actually making
the rest of the periodic table that
we’re made of?” ❚
Exoplanets

New telescope could tell us what

exoplanet surfaces are made of
Alex Wilkins
NASA, ESA, CSA, DANI PLAYER (STSCI)

THE James Webb Space Telescope looking at this planet is yes, JWST
(JWST) may be able to give us a will be able to characterise some
glimpse of the surfaces of rocky surfaces, but what we’re finding
planets outside our solar system, is that the surfaces that we will be
as well as their atmospheres. able to characterise are the more
One way of measuring the reflective ones,” says team
atmosphere of a distant planet member Matej Malik at the
is to watch as it passes, or transits, University of Maryland.
in front of its star. As light passes The planets we can observe
through the gases that envelop a might share similarities with
world, molecules absorb certain bodies in our solar system such as
wavelengths of light, helping Mercury or the moon, which have
astronomers figure out the dark surfaces, but with brighter,
composition of its air. spotty regions, says Malik.
Measuring the surface of a The TRAPPIST-1 planetary
planet is trickier. Light reflecting system, which is around 40 light
off it will also carry information Illustration of the surface produces a strong signal, years from Earth, could be a prime
on its make-up, but it has to pass exoplanet LHS 3844b one that is unaffected by its target for this technique. “It’s not
through the atmosphere, making and its host star sparse atmosphere. something that’s only applicable
it hard to figure out what they are The researchers created to LHS 3844b,” says Raymond
both made from. The reflected the planet and which are coming artificial signals from a variety of Pierrehumbert at the University
light will also be weak, so noise from the atmosphere,” says Emily different surface and atmosphere of Oxford. “TRAPPIST-1b is a hot
can be a problem. So far, no one Whittaker at the University of compositions and then compared planet which is certainly rocky,
has managed to accurately California, Los Angeles. them with the telescope data to and potentially a nearly bare rock
determine the make-up of an In an effort to prepare for JWST’s work out the make-up of the with a wisp of atmosphere.”
exoplanet’s surface – but this exoplanet observations, Whittaker surface. The most likely scenarios This ability to potentially
could be about to change. and their team have practised with involved rocky ground dominated distinguish the signatures of
“With JWST, hopefully, the data taken by the Spitzer Space by iron, with varying amounts of atmospheres and surfaces is
noise floor should be low enough Telescope of LHS 3844b – a planet other metals like magnesium innovative, says Pierrehumbert,
that we’ll be able to disentangle that is hot like Mercury – as it and calcium in different forms and makes observing some
which of those features are passed in front of its host star. (arXiv, doi.org/h6vk). exoplanet surfaces within
coming from the surface of The heat means the planet’s “What we can already say just the “margins of feasibility”. ❚

Galaxies

JWST spots a weird examined the light from three
galaxies shown in JWST’s first
galaxy with almost deep-field image to measure
no heavy elements the abundance of elements that
astronomers call metals, meaning
THERE is a strange, metal-poor anything heavier than hydrogen.
galaxy lurking in the distant These heavy elements are formed
universe. The very first image in stars, which distribute them
released by the James Webb Space throughout space when they die.
Telescope (JWST) team revealed Two of the galaxies the team
a galaxy with far fewer heavy examined were about 29.4 billion
elements than we would expect, light years away from Earth, while
which may mean it is sucking the third was around 30.2 billion
up pristine hydrogen gas from light years away. The nearer
intergalactic space. galaxies had fewer metals than
Mirko Curti at the University galaxies in our part of the universe,
of Cambridge and his colleagues as expected, but the further one
had almost no metals at all –
just 2 per cent of the metal
content of the sun (arxiv.org/
abs/2207.12375).
“This is one of the most
extremely metal-poor objects
that we have ever seen,” says Curti.
Spotting such an odd galaxy
so soon into JWST’s observation
run was a surprise. “No one was
expecting to immediately see
evidence for this extremely
“This galaxy is one of
the most extremely
metal-poor objects
we have ever seen”
metal-poor galaxy in the very
first data,” says Curti.
In the local universe, a galaxy’s
metal abundance is closely linked to
its mass and rate of star formation,
but this galaxy seems to buck
the trend. That probably means
it recently underwent some sort of
dramatic change, says Curti, possibly
swallowing up hydrogen gas from
the space between galaxies.
As we get more detailed
observations of other distant
galaxies, researchers will be
able to figure out whether such
metal-poor galaxies are common
or if this one is an anomaly. ❚ LC

6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 13

News
Wildlife
How pobblebonk frogs
handle acidic pools
Jake Buehler
AUSTRALIA’S scarlet-sided
pobblebonk frog thrives in waters
so acidic they should be deadly,
with its tadpoles tolerating water
with a pH within the range of
human stomach acid. This may be
thanks to the frogs’ heightened
ability to draw dissolved calcium
from the water into their gills.
Freshwater lakes and streams
typically fall into the neutral range
of 6 to 8 on the pH scale. But
BEN REVELL
naturally occurring, highly acidic
freshwater ecosystems are found
around the world, says Rebecca
Cramp at the University of
Queensland in Australia.
In eastern Australia, there is
the Wallum – a sandy, coastal
region whose swamps and lakes
can plunge below pH 3. Many
creatures have adapted to such
acidic ecosystems, including
the Wallum’s scarlet-sided
pobblebonk frogs (Limnodynastes
terraereginae), whose tadpoles
tolerate water about 32 times
more acidic than the level that
kills most frog species.
pH 3.5
The acidity of lakes that
pobblebonk frogs can thrive in
Low pH is normally detrimental
for fish and amphibians because
it causes cells in their gill lining to
pull apart and lose sodium ions.
“The gills become leaky, and
then the animal dies because it
loses all its salt,” says Greg Goss
at the University of Alberta in
Canada, who wasn’t involved
with the research.
Calcium is a crucial component
of the junctions that hold gill
lining cells together, so Cramp and
her colleagues investigated the
role of calcium ions in granting
the pobblebonk its acid-thwarting
powers. The team collected
clumps of hundreds of
14 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
Chemistry
Forensic fingerprinting
technique could help
spot document fraud
Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
A METHOD for determining
whether a fingerprint appeared
on a piece of paper before or
after text was printed on it
could help resolve fraud cases.
The approach uses standard
forensic tools and so would
be simple to put to use.
In forensics, the “when”
is often as important as the
“who”. In a case, there could
be a situation where someone
is suspected of tampering with
a will or contract by printing
on top of it, for example.
A scarlet-sided Determining when someone’s
pobblebonk frog in fingerprint was made on the
Queensland, Australia document could bolster any
other evidence of tampering,
pobblebonk eggs from Bribie says Roberto King at Foster +
Island, Queensland, and raised the Freeman, a forensic instrument
frogs in the lab. “[The frogs’] ability company based in the UK.
to actually thrive at pH 3.5 is King and his colleagues have
phenomenal and something that now created a technique that
we marvel at still,” says Cramp. goes some way to achieving
The researchers put some of the this. It lifts the print using a thin
tadpoles in acidic water and others layer of gelatin, which reacts
in acidic water with extra calcium. differently if the fingerprint
After seven days, they measured was left on the paper before
the amount of sodium ions or after printing.
present in their bodies and the
surrounding water. The tadpoles
To use the technique, a
technician places the gelatin
in low pH water with extra calcium over a fingerprint that overlaps
lost fewer sodium ions than those with some printed text. They
in acidic water without calcium then peel off the gelatin and
added, hinting at calcium’s
protective role in acidic Which came first, the
environments. Moreover, when fingerprint or the text in the
the tadpoles were exposed to document it was lifted from?
ruthenium red – a compound
that interferes with channels that
allow cells to take up calcium – the
frogs lost their acid tolerance,
leaking large amounts of sodium
(Journal of Experimental Biology,
doi.org/h6vg).
The researchers think the
CULTURA CREATIVE RF/ALAMY
tadpoles can supply the junctions
between gill lining cells with
a reliable stream of calcium by
sucking it up from the water and
storing it in cells, which stabilises
the lining in acidic conditions. ❚
place it inside a vacuum-sealed
glass box filled with a vapour
of a chemical called disulphur
dinitride. This vapour binds
to the microscopic fingerprint
ridges imprinted on the gelatin’s
surface so that after a few
minutes, a blue-coloured
fingerprint is revealed.
The team tested this process
for a fingerprint that had text
printed over it and another that
was made on top of printed text.
In the former case, the gelatin
touched the text instead of the
fingerprint first, so the pattern
at the end of processing was
noticeably different. The team
could therefore tell whether
the fingerprint or the text
came first (Scientific Reports,
doi.org/h6vn).
“This approach could be
a much simpler and cheaper
alternative to what has been
proposed previously,” says
Melanie Bailey at the University
of Surrey in the UK. Past
experiments involved
specialised instruments
that may not be common
in forensics labs, she says.
King says that crime scene
examiners in the UK routinely
carry gelatin lifters and that
the rest of his team’s process
wouldn’t require extensive
further training. Additionally,
the new technique can be
combined with other forensic
techniques, as gelatin lifting
doesn’t destroy the fingerprint,
he says.
So far, the researchers have
only tested combinations of
fingerprints and laser jet inks,
but they want to expand the
method to other types of
printing. They also want to
extend it to writing with
ballpoint pens, relevant for
signature fraud, and stamps
for possibly forged passports. ❚
Health

Symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome

may be caused by mini blood clots
Grace Wade

PEOPLE with chronic fatigue if microclots were also found in for seven measures of abnormal a 2 or higher; nearly half scored
syndrome may have tiny clots this condition. They analysed blood clotting, such as clot size and a 3 or 4. The concentration of
in their blood. These “microclots” blood samples from 25 adults in clotting rate. Blood from 20 of the microclots found wasn’t as severe
could be responsible for South Africa diagnosed with ME/ 25 people fell outside the normal as you would see in people with
symptoms including persistent CFS who had symptoms for at least range on at least one measure, and acute or long covid, says Pretorius.
exhaustion, pain and brain fog. six months. These were compared four people had abnormal results But it was similar to diabetes
It is estimated that chronic with samples from 15 adults from on five of the measures. and cardiovascular disease
fatigue syndrome, or myalgic the same area without ME/CFS or The researchers also used (Pharmaceuticals, doi.org/h6w8).
encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), any condition known to increase fluorescent staining to reveal the The finding provides a possible
affects up to 2.5 million people the risk of clotting. size and number of microclots explanation for the exhaustion
in the US, but little is understood First, the team analysed the under a microscope. Samples were characteristic of ME/CFS, says
about what causes it. samples from people with ME/CFS graded on a scale of 1 to 4 with Walter Ian Lipkin at Columbia
Microclots are clumps of blood higher scores indicating more University in New York. Microclots
platelets under 200 micrometres Microclots can reduce clotting. All control blood samples block small blood vessels. “[This]
in diameter. Researchers have blood and oxygen flow, scored a 1, but 80 per cent of those stops the ability of oxygen to
known for decades that these are causing fatigue from people with ME/CFS scored get to tissues,” says Kell, which
found in people with conditions undermines cell function.
associated with inflammation, It also validates that what
such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s and people are experiencing is real.
rheumatoid arthritis. More “A very large population of
recently, it has been found that clinicians and psychologists say
blood samples from people with there is nothing physically wrong
long covid can contain high with individuals, it’s all in their
STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

concentrations of these small heads,” says Pretorius.

platelet clumps. It may also offer an avenue
Since ME/CFS shares symptoms for treatment. ME/CFS may be
with long covid, such as headaches a vascular clotting disease, says
and lethargy, Resia Pretorius Pretorius. If future research
at Stellensbosch University in confirms this, doctors may be able
South Africa, Douglas Kell at the to use anti-clotting medications or
University of Liverpool in the UK other interventions to treat people
and their colleagues wanted to see with this condition, says Kell. ❚

Technology

Voice jammer conversations by broadcasting
inverse sound waves that affect
stops anyone from all microphones within earshot.
recording you speak This can prevent nearby people’s
phones from picking up their voices
YOU can now prevent the speech if they try to make a call, and can
of a single target person from being stop them interacting with smart
recorded by using a voice jammer. assistants, tipping people off that
Voice jammers work much something strange is going on.
like noise-cancelling headphones, Now Qiben Yan at Michigan State
which effectively squash unwanted University and his colleagues have
background sound waves out of created a voice jammer that can
existence by playing back a copy target a specific voice without
of the unwanted sound with its causing disruption to anyone else.
wave pattern inverted. They did this by training an artificial
Such voice jammers generally intelligence called a neural network
stop electronic eavesdropping on to isolate a speaker’s voice, allowing
the jammer to create an inverse
sound matched to their speech.
Rather than transmitting an
audible sound, their tool, called
Neural Enhanced Cancellation (NEC),
makes use of a bug found in all but
the most expensive microphones.
This bug introduces sounds at
set distances above and below
the microphone’s recording
frequencies. NEC is able to use
this quirk to play its inverse speech
“The voice jammer
broadcasts in the
ultrasonic range, so that
humans can’t hear it”
in the ultrasonic range, so that
humans can’t hear it. Doing this at
the point of recording provides the
necessary frequencies to secretly
block an audible voice (arxiv.org/
abs/2207.05848).
The team found that NEC blocked
voices on a range of smartphones
from Apple, Xiaomi and Samsung
at a distance of up to 3.6 metres.
This technology could be useful
for people like politicians, who
may want to make sure a hidden
microphone can’t record what
they are saying during a private
conversation in public, says Yan.  ❚
Matthew Sparkes

6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 15

News Insight
Coronavirus

Could vaccines end the pandemic?

Nasal vaccines may stem transmission, while universal ones could target proteins in
every SARS-CoV-2 variant and even other coronaviruses, reports Michael Le Page
THE coronavirus vaccines have
been a success, possibly saving
tens of millions of lives. However,
they haven’t ended the pandemic
and their effectiveness has been
eroded by the evolution of
variants of the SARS-CoV-2
coronavirus. A new generation of
covid-19 vaccines is needed – but
what exactly should this involve?
The US plans to roll out boosters
that target the BA.4 and BA.5
omicron subvariants. Yet variant-
specific boosters aren’t going to be

“The covid-19 vaccines

are amazing and far

VINCENZO PINTO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

better than we had
a right to hope for”

a game changer, not least because

newer variants will have evolved
before they are administered.
Many researchers are aiming
bigger: hoping to create vaccines
that provide broad protection
against many variants or to
develop nasal vaccines that more
effectively prevent infections –
and preferably both combined.
Some immunologists think
such second-generation vaccines
could work so well that they stop
transmission altogether, if enough
people are vaccinated. “We have
to be careful not to overpromise,
but potentially there are huge
benefits,” says Ed Lavelle at Trinity
College Dublin in Ireland.
The main ingredient of most
existing covid-19 vaccines is the
spike protein of the original
SARS-CoV-2 from January 2020.
This protrudes from the virus,
helping it to enter cells. The
technologies for packaging this
protein vary, but the principle
is the same. These vaccines are
also all injected.
“The vaccines are amazing and
far better than we had a right to
hope for,” says Danny Altmann
at Imperial College London.
Yet they haven’t stopped wave
after wave of infections around
the world. “Living with covid”
is a problem for many reasons.
While vaccines greatly reduce
the threat of serious illness, they
don’t eliminate it. And with each
reinfection, people are at risk of
getting long covid.
Waning immunity
Why haven’t the vaccines halted
transmission? Part of the reason
is that, by the time vaccines were
rolled out, new variants – alpha,
first detected in the UK, and beta
in South Africa – had spike protein
mutations that allowed them to
partly evade immunity. In other
words, the vaccine target – the
spike protein – changes.
Jonathan Yewdell at the
National Institutes of Health in
Maryland says there is a more
fundamental reason: no vaccine
provides long-lasting protection
against any virus that can be
transmitted without the blood
or lymph glands being involved.
We should never have expected
conventional vaccines to stop
the pandemic, he wrote in 2021.
Take the measles virus, the
most contagious virus we know,
but also one that vaccines provide
lifelong protection against. It
doesn’t initially infect the cells
lining our noses and throats.
Instead, it gets into immune
cells in the lungs, which carry
the virus to the lymph nodes,
where it spreads in the body
and is coughed or sneezed out
when it reaches the airways.
Vaccinated people still
sometimes catch measles, but
given its convoluted route to
the airways, the immune system
has plenty of opportunities to
intercept the virus before it is
transmitted to anyone else.
By contrast, many respiratory
viruses directly infect cells in the
mucous membrane lining the
airways. When the cells shed
Covid-19 vaccine vials
being filled at Catalent
Biologics in Italy
more viruses, these can infect
other people. In the weeks after
vaccination against many
respiratory viruses, immunity
may be high enough to prevent
infection, but as this wanes, the risk
of getting mucosal infections and
passing them on rapidly increases.
One key factor is that mucosal
immunity is different from the
immunity that occurs in the rest
of the body. Specific immune cells
sit in the mucous membranes
ready to detect and respond to
pathogens, such as by secreting
distinct antibodies. In fact, these
membranes secrete vastly more
antibodies than the rest of the
body produces.
In general, injected vaccines
produce strong overall immunity,
but not mucosal immunity
specifically, which is also true
of mRNA covid-19 vaccines.

16 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022


Two main things must be done
to create better covid-19 vaccines.
The first is to create broadly
protective, or universal, vaccines
that the coronavirus cannot easily
evade. The idea is to find parts of
the coronavirus that can’t change
because they have a vital function,
and get our immune system to
focus on them. “If they are doing
something important, the survival
cost to the virus of mutating them
will be incompatible with
existence, and those are the ones
you have to hit,” says Altmann.
Next-generation vaccines
Although it might be theoretically
possible to come up with a pan-
coronavirus vaccine that protects
against all kinds of these viruses
and prevents future coronavirus
pandemics, in practice, this is
difficult. Despite decades of
work, we still don’t have a
universal flu vaccine.
But lots of effort and money
are being poured into developing
universal coronavirus vaccines,
with some teams reporting
promising results in animals and
a handful being tested in people.
One of the many challenges
is to get the immune system to
focus on a specific part of a protein
that is shared by SARS-CoV-2
variants specifically or even other
coronaviruses in the overall virus
class. This can be achieved by
“If you can generate an
immune response in the
gut, you might protect
people from long covid”
including only small parts of
these proteins in a vaccine.
Another method is to include
several different versions of the
same protein – shared by different
coronaviruses or SARS-CoV-2
variants specifically – to
encourage our immune system
to focus on the shared part.
A vaccine candidate developed
in the US consists of viral particles
that have eight versions of the
same part of the spike protein
protruding from them, one from
SARS-CoV-2 and seven from animal
coronaviruses. In animal tests, this
protected against severe disease
from several SARS-CoV-2 variants.
It didn’t prevent infection,
however, which may be hard
to achieve with an injected
universal vaccine.
Hence, the growing interest
in the second main approach to
improving vaccines: inducing
strong mucosal immunity in our
airways to stop infections taking
hold and being passed on to others.
The most powerful immune
response is at the site of exposure,
says Lavelle. For respiratory
diseases, this usually means
spraying a vaccine up the nose.
Only one intranasal vaccine
has ever been approved: FluMist
in 2003. There are several
challenges with intranasal
vaccination that have deterred
vaccine-makers. One is getting
vaccine proteins through the
mucous membrane.
This requires larger doses,
which can make such vaccines
More Insight online
Your guide to a rapidly changing world
newscientist.com/insight
much more expensive, depending
on the technology used. However,
recent studies have shown that
THEMBA HADEBE/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK
linking proteins to certain fatty
molecules can help them
penetrate the mucosal surface.
One team recently reported
that proteins modified like
this induced mucosal antibody
levels that were 1000-fold
higher than those triggered
A woman being by unmodified proteins.
vaccinated in SARS-CoV-2 sometimes infects
South Africa the gut and boosting gut mucosal
immunity appears to increase
respiratory mucosal immunity
2020
When the covid-19 virus that
too. Therefore, some groups are
working on vaccines that can be
swallowed in pill form. Certain
vaccines are based on emerged cases of long covid may be due
to persistent gut infections,
1000x
The increase in antibodies when
according to Lawrence Young at
the University of Warwick, UK.
“If you can generate an immune
viral proteins are modified response in the mucosa in the gut,
then you might protect people
2003
The year the only intranasal
from some of the effects of long
covid,” he says.
As with universal vaccines,
vaccine, FluMist, was approved dozens of teams are working on
mucosal covid-19 vaccines, with
some excellent results in animal
studies and several being tested
People queuing for in people. Combining the two
a vaccine in Jakarta, approaches would prevent new
Indonesia variants from rapidly evading
intranasal vaccines.
The big question is whether
any such vaccines could block
transmission altogether. Yewdell
is doubtful, pointing out that
our immune system isn’t perfect.
Others, including Lavelle and
Altmann, think it is achievable.
But even if next-generation
vaccines are good enough to
BAY ISMOYO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
achieve the long-sought-after
goal of herd immunity, there is
still the issue of getting enough
people vaccinated. It will be
easier to persuade people to get
a spray up the nose than an
injection, says Lavelle. ❚
6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 17
News
Security

Fraudsters in the US could use loophole

to get material for a ‘dirty bomb’
James Dinneen

AN INVESTIGATION in the US has Bennie Thompson asked the material from the vendors added the report is “re-ringing an alarm
found that someone using fake Government Accountability Office up to a more strictly controlled bell” on inadequate controls
companies and fraudulent (GAO) – a congressional agency – “category 2” quantity, which is around access to radioactive
licences could obtain enough to investigate issues related to the between 10 and 1000 times the materials. Concerns about
radioactive material to build a security of radioactive materials amount of radioactive material domestic terrorism and other
“dirty bomb”, without ever having following previous investigations needed to cause permanent violent acts make warnings about
their credentials checked. Federal that found vulnerabilities to how human injury. If investigators dirty bombs more urgent, she
regulators don’t have plans to fix the materials are licensed. In the had ordered a category 2 quantity says. “We’re living in a time of
the loophole in licensing rules US, licensing is managed by the unfortunately worrisome
until at least the end of 2023. Nuclear Regulatory Commission “Investigators set up two scenarios.” According to the GAO
Dirty bombs use regular and state governments. companies to purchase report, officials at the National
explosives to spread radioactive To test the licensing process radioactive material using Nuclear Security Administration
material. A 2017 Sandia National against fraud, GAO investigators fraudulent paper licences” believe there is increasing interest
Laboratories report found a large set up two shell companies in making a dirty bomb.
dirty bomb detonated in lower authorised to purchase radioactive directly, the vendors would have A spokesperson for the Nuclear
Manhattan in New York could material using fraudulent paper been required to verify the licence Regulatory Commission told New
cause as much as $30 billion in licences. Investigators then with the Nuclear Regulatory Scientist it has warned vendors to
damage. Even though no one ordered radioactive materials Commission or the state. be vigilant of unusual activity and
would die immediately from the from two different US vendors. GAO agents waited until the it has expedited the rule change,
radiation itself, there could be as The quantity of material from material was delivered before but immediately making a change
many as 1500 fatalities from the each vendor was small enough refusing each order, ensuring it “would risk unintended impacts
evacuation, such as from that the vendors weren’t required was returned safely to the vendor. to important and safe medical,
relocating vulnerable people. to verify licences before fulfilling Tara Sonenshine at Tufts academic and industrial uses of
In 2019, Congress member orders. Together, however, the University in Massachusetts says these materials”. ❚

Zoology

Moths are doing The large yellow underwing

(Noctua pronuba) pollinates
more pollinating red clover flowers
than we thought
for those only visited by
SPYING on the nocturnal activity bumblebees (Biology Letters,
of moths has exposed the insects’ doi.org/gqj7tv).
overlooked role in pollination. “This is just one plant species,
Using 15 time-lapse cameras, but it’s been the subject of so much
SHUTTERSTOCK/NATALIA ZAGAJA

Jamie Alison at Aarhus University research. I’d wager that moths are
in Denmark and his colleagues thanklessly pollinating hundreds of
have recorded what happens in a less famous flower species across
meadow in the Swiss Alps, 24 hours Europe,” says Alison.
a day, over a whole summer. The study builds on previous
The team has found that moths work that measured pollen found
account for 34 per cent of visits on moths’ bodies. “Technology
to red clover (Trifolium pratense), research into red clover pollination, bumblebees made 61 per cent has put us in a position where we
a wild flower that is a valuable no mention of this contribution has of flower visits – but dissection of can easily catch moths red-handed
forage crop for animals and has previously been made. the fruiting bodies of the red clover, during pollination,” says Alison.
an important role in improving Most studies looking at plants and cross-checking them with Moth traps are being developed
soil nutrients and structure. and insect pollinators have focused camera footage, showed that that use cameras linked to artificial
The large yellow underwing on a few bee species, meaning those visited by bumblebees or intelligence-based identification,
(Noctua pronuba) was the moth observation has almost exclusively moths or both produced 11.6 per says Alison, which should reveal
primarily responsible for the flower taken place during the day. cent more seeds than those without. more of what moths are up to.  ❚
visits. However, in over a century of Alison’s team found that No significant difference was seen Gary Hartley

18 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022

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News More field notes online
If you like this story we have more online
newscientist.com/article-type/field-notes
Field notes Rushton Woods Preserve, Pennsylvania

Tiny trackers reveal bird migration routes in amazing detail

“Nanotags” being fitted on birds at a nature preserve outside
Philadelphia are revolutionising tracking, finds Corryn Wetzel

IN THE dappled light beneath the Shelly Eshleman uses

forest canopy, Shelly Eshleman tiny Motus tags to track
pauses for a moment to listen. It bird migration
is just after 6am on a humid July
morning, and through the chorus now where we can start doing
of birdsong, she has detected the the kind of research that we were
chatter of an eastern towhee – hoping to do seven or eight years
WILLISTOWN CONSERVATION TRUST; CORRYN WETZEL

the species we’re looking for. ago, but the infrastructure was not
As we move through the there,” says ornithologist Scott
undergrowth at the Rushton Weidensaul, who has been using
Woods Preserve outside the tags to study northern saw-
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I whet owls (Aegolius acadicus)
dodge a set of 12-metre-long mist at the Rushton preserve.
nets set out that morning: they The nanotags are already
are made out of super-fine thread turning up surprises. A federally
designed to safely entangle birds. protected shorebird species called
Eshleman is hoping to lure one of the red knot (Calidris canutus) is
the black-and-orange birds into known to relish coastal areas, but
the netting so that she can attach a its path between resting places
jelly-bean-sized device to its back. was less clear. Motus nanotags
It is an ultra-lightweight radio showed that many of the birds fly
“nanotag”, and Eshleman is one of north-west over Pennsylvania on
a handful of scientists now using their journey from the coasts of
them to map birds’ locations. The New Jersey and Delaware each
towhees (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) spring, a discovery that could help
she is tagging this summer are guide the placement of wind
some of the first of their species farms in the area as birds can
to be tracked this way. The tags collide with the structures and die.
used in what’s known as the Motus These kinds of insights come at
Wildlife Tracking System can the process of attaching a Motus The lifespan of each device a crucial time, given the threats to
weigh as little as a few raindrops. tag to a similarly sized species depends on how often it pings wildlife posed by climate change
“Where Motus excels is called a grey catbird (Dumetella towers: the more frequent, the and habitat loss. According to the
being able to tag and track the carolinensis). She carefully faster the battery drains. Hardier latest State of the World’s Birds
smallest animals over the largest removes the bird from the netting species like towhees can be fitted report, around 48 per cent of birds
distances,” says Stu Mackenzie and slides a loop of clear stretch with larger tags with solar panels worldwide are known or suspected
at Birds Canada in Ontario. cord around each of its thighs, as if that recharge the device endlessly; to be dropping in number. “It’s
Motus tags use radio it were stepping into a tiny pair of smaller versions used on insects about knowing where to focus our
waves to locate thousands of pants. She then positions the tag and hummingbirds last just weeks. resources to try to reverse these
animals, pinging receiver towers between the bird’s wings in the When the Willistown declines,” says Lisa Kiziuk, director
as far as 15 kilometres away. The Conservation Trust began working of bird conservation at the
technology was introduced in 2012
by Birds Canada, but it is only with
the recent expansion of the tower
31
The number of countries that now
with Motus in 2017, there were
only a handful of towers in the
northeastern US. Since then,
Willistown Conservation Trust.
The information the nanotags
collect is publicly available online
network that it is really changing have Motus tracking towers the trust and other groups that too, which Kiziuk hopes will spur
how we track small migratory together form the Northeast people to become invested in the
species. There are now more than centre of its back. The entire Motus Collaboration have species in their backyard. “You
1400 radio towers in 31 countries. process takes around 2 minutes. installed more than 115 receiver could work your whole life telling
We check the nets every Previously, researchers had to stations from Maryland to Maine. people what you’re seeing in the
40 minutes for the next 6 hours, use coded aluminium leg bands, They have picked up more than 25 field… and it means nothing,” she
but find no towhees. So Eshleman, which required recapturing the million data points, contributing says. “But you show them a map
at the Willistown Conservation birds every time they wanted to to Motus’s more than 1 billion total with a track of one bird and they’re
Trust which runs the Rushton log their location. With a Motus observations of 287 species so far. like ‘Oh!’ It’s like a light bulb. That’s
Woods Preserve, demonstrates tag, the bird is captured just once. “We’re finally at the point what it takes.” ❚

6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 21

News
Society

Dental X-rays likely to be used to assess

the ages of asylum seekers in the UK
Jason Arunn Murugesu

FOUR supposedly scientific New Scientist previously alongside current interview-based ahead with dental age checks, it
methods, probably including reported that the Home Office age assessments. DNA is no longer will be an aberration,” says Eddie
dental X-rays, will be proposed to committee was focusing on dental being considered, with the Crouch at the BDA. “These are not
help estimate the ages of asylum age assessments, wrist bone committee instead recommending scientific methods, but reckless
seekers in the UK, New Scientist analysis and the use of blood two techniques based on X-rays plans that fail basic tests on
understands, despite concerns or saliva samples to discover age- and two on MRIs. accuracy and ethics.”
from researchers and health related chemical modifications One controversial method, “This advisory committee
bodies that there is no accurate in DNA. Sources who spoke to which uses dental X-rays and has refused our offers to engage,”
way to determine someone’s age. New Scientist on condition of works on the assumption that he says. “The inevitable result will
The methods will be proposed anonymity now say the committee teeth mature at a constant rate, be that vulnerable child migrants
in a report due to be published will propose the use of four is very likely to be recommended, will end up paying the price.”
by the UK Home Office’s Age scientific methods to be used New Scientist understands. Another method likely to be
Estimation Science Advisory The British Dental Association recommended is the analysis of
Committee, according to three A radiologist carrying (BDA) has previously called the collarbone maturity, either using
sources with knowledge of the out a dental X-ray technique inaccurate. MRI scans or X-rays. “It’s a marker
report’s contents. in a hospital “If the government presses that matures much later,” one
The committee has spent source with knowledge of the
the past few months examining committee’s report told New
several methods that could help Scientist. “If you can see that
officials better assess the ages someone’s collarbone is more
of asylum seekers. The issue has mature, then you’re more
gained more traction recently confident that they’re over 18.”
BSIP/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

due to the UK government’s But this measure isn’t perfect

attempts to deport asylum and can still only tell you
seekers to Rwanda. someone’s age within a five-year
The Home Office has said range, according to the source,
that no unaccompanied children which could include ages both
will be flown to Rwanda, but above and below 18.
charity workers have argued that The Home Office said it wouldn’t
children wrongly assessed to be comment on the contents of the
over 18 have already been sent report, only saying that it will be
deportation orders. published in “due course”. ❚

Cybersecurity

Computer cables Mordechai Guri at Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev, Israel,
become antenna has developed a proof-of-concept
to steal data attack that focuses on the Serial
Advanced Technology Attachment
HACKERS can covertly turn a cable (SATA) cables that connect CD,
inside a computer into a makeshift DVD and hard disc drives to the
antenna that can secretly transmit motherboard of most computers.
sensitive data, even from “air- He found that by deliberately
gapped” devices that aren’t creating a very specific series of
connected to the internet. superfluous data reads or writes
Air-gapped computers are used from or to the drives, the cables can
by government security services and be made to create a radio wave at
key infrastructure control systems around 6 gigahertz. This wave can
to prevent remote hackers from be used to encode and transmit data
gaining access, but that doesn’t to a waiting hacker several metres
make it impossible to get data out. away (arxiv.org/abs/2207.07413).
Forcing a computer to create these
radio wave signals would involve
installing a piece of malware, which
Guri calls SATAn, on the air-gapped
machine. This might seem like a
challenge, but it is possible. A report
published in 2021 by security firm
ESET says that at least 17 pieces
of malware are known to exist that
target air-gapped machines, but
that they rely heavily on USB drives
to infect machines. Unlike SATAn,
“This attack is highly
available since hard drives
exist in all systems such as
workstations and servers”
these also use USB drives for
the removal of data, which is
transmitted back to the attacker
once the drive is plugged into an
internet-connected machine.
Guri says he doesn’t know if
similar attacks to SATAn are actually
taking place, but says they are
entirely plausible. “This attack is
highly available since hard drives
exist in all systems such as
workstations and servers,” he says.
“In addition, the malware uses
legitimate read and write hard drive
operations, which are challenging to
detect and identify as malicious.” ❚
Matthew Sparkes

22 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022

News In brief
Coronavirus
Covid-19 taste issue
affects more women
WOMEN who experience
problems with smell and taste
when they have covid-19 are more
likely to have long-lasting issues
with the senses than men.
Benjamin Tan at the National
University Hospital in Singapore
and his colleagues have analysed
18 clinical studies from around the
world to investigate the prevalence
of smell and taste problems
caused by covid-19 and how long
they last. The studies included a
total of 3699 people.
Between 10.8 per cent and
14.7 per cent of women were likely
to have issues with smell and taste
that lasted for at least six months
if they had initial problems with
the two senses after developing
covid-19. The equivalent figure
for men was between 1.4 and
2.9 per cent (BMJ, doi.org/h6jj).
Jason Arunn Murugesu
Technology
Robot hand contains
artificial muscles
A ROBOTIC hand can lift 1000
times its own weight thanks to
tiny inflatable artificial muscles.
Corrado De Pascali at the
Italian Institute of Technology
and his colleagues developed the
3D-printed artificial muscles from
actuators that convert energy into
movement. The actuators have a
membrane made from a flexible
resin that can be inflated and
deflated, enabling them to stretch
and contract like a human muscle.
When put to the test, one 8-gram
actuator lifted 8 kilograms.
The actuators can be combined
to mimic muscles. The researchers
linked 18 different-sized actuators
to make a robotic hand with a
wrist. By applying pressure to the
different actuator membranes, the
hand could bend its fingers, twist
its palm and rotate at the wrist
(Science Robotics, doi.org/gqkdfh).
Chris Stokel-Walker
24 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
Physics
Highest safe
dives for
most people
calculated
HOW high would you dare to
dive from? An experiment with
3D-printed models has discovered
how high people can leap from into
water without serious risk of injury.
Sunghwan Jung at Cornell
University in New York and his
colleagues studied the forces
experienced when hitting water
by dropping 3D-printed models
representing different postures into
a tank. One represented a person
diving head first with their hands by
their sides, one a person with their
hands above their head and their
palms touching (pictured), and
another was just a leg with a foot
representing jumping in feet first.
Each model was equipped with a
force sensor and was filmed with a
Really brief
MONICA ROBERTS/GETTY IMAGES
More rain predicted
to fall at volcanoes
Climate change could
cause more extreme
rainfall at the majority
ANUPAM PANDEY, JISOO YUK, AND SUNGHWAN JUNG AT
of Earth’s active land
volcanoes. Rainfall has
previously been implicated
as a risk factor for eruptions
and mudslides (Royal
Society Open Science,
doi.org/gqj7v5).
How we evolved
to digest milk
Milk consumption was
widespread thousands
high-speed camera when dropped. of years before people
To determine unsafe heights for were able to break it down
diving, the researchers compared properly, according to the
the forces they recorded with those largest study yet on the
known to cause physical damage to evolution of lactose
people. They found that those force tolerance in humans.
levels were met for head-first divers The ability to break down
above 8 metres, hands-first divers lactose was probably
above 12 metres and foot-first gained during episodes of
divers above 15 metres. acute crisis, not gradually
Jung says that most of the force over time, the study found
affecting the body while diving is (Nature, doi.org/h6fn).
due to the displacement of water.
It is like pushing your fingers very Paper battery
quickly into a jar of honey – the
activated by water
liquid forcefully resists, he says.
People have successfully dived A battery made from
from much higher than the limits paper coated with graphite
found in the study. For example, and zinc dust can provide
Laso Schaller broke the record for power for a range of tiny
the highest feet-first dive in 2015 disposable electronics, with
when he jumped from 58.8 metres possible uses in delivery
above water. Jung says that to tracking and environmental
execute such extreme jumps monitoring. The batteries
without injury, divers must flex are dormant while dry,
the right muscles to make their but produce current when
bodies stiffer and tighter (Science water is added (Scientific
Advances, doi.org/gqj8q3). Reports, doi.org/h6jm).
Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
7– 9 O C T 2 0 2 2

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Views
The columnist Aperture
Chanda Prescod- Mysterious creatures
Weinstein tackles from the bottom of
space-time p30 the Pacific Ocean p32
Comment
Advertising crisis
We urgently need a public information campaign about the climate
emergency, to both educate and trigger action, says Bill McGuire
F
OR many of us, the
record-breaking heat and
accompanying wildfires
that plagued the UK, continental
Europe and parts of the US last
month were evidence of climate
breakdown in the raw – a direct
consequence of global warming
supercharged by the 2.4 trillion
tonnes of carbon dioxide that have
been vomited into the atmosphere
by human activities over the past
couple of centuries.
To others, ignorant of the facts
or refusing to accept them, it was
just another heatwave. In the UK,
John Hayes, chair of a group of
Tory MPs known – without any
irony at all – as the Common
Sense Group, called those
taking precautions in the heat
MICHELLE D’URBANO
“snowflakes”. Deputy prime
minister Dominic Raab suggested
that we just enjoy the sunshine.
Such views aren’t confined to
Tory politicians, but are also held
by large numbers of the UK public,
a fact that is unsurprising given
the dearth of government-
endorsed information about what
is happening to the climate and
what we should be doing about it.
In the past, people in the UK
have been told to “Clunk, click,
every trip” to get them wearing
seat belts, or to “Stay home,
protect the NHS, save lives” during
the covid-19 pandemic, but on the
climate emergency – the greatest
threat civilisation has ever faced –
nothing. At a time when the
world’s climate is falling apart, it
is nonsensical for those charged
with keeping the UK and its
Letters
We need to prepare
for a future of
sentient AIs p34
inhabitants safe and well to stay
silent. Never has the need for a
public information campaign
been so great, not only to educate
people about the true nature of
the climate breakdown threat,
but also to flag what they can
do to mitigate its impact.
To do its job, such a campaign
must provide information in
digestible form and be hard-
hitting enough to galvanise action
and trigger behavioural change:
posters on buses and the London
Underground showing how
temperatures are ramping up,
graphic images of the aftermath
of wildfires and floods, and mock-
Culture
The challenge of
returning lost species
to ecosystems p36
ups of lines of UK climate refugees
trudging through London streets.
Campaigns should never
be preachy or patronise, but it is
acceptable to cajole, inspire, even
shame – “what did you do in the
climate war, daddy?” – to get the
required response. They certainly
don’t need to be dull or worthy.
Who, of a certain age in the UK,
can forget “Save water, bath with
a friend” – the playful slogan
of the extreme drought of the
long, hot summer of 1976.
Launching a campaign that
instils understanding of the
climate crisis and provokes
individual and collective action
Culture columnist
Simon Ings on a
film about explorer
Ranulph Fiennes p38
is a no-brainer. But there is a
problem. Governments the
world over remain in thrall to
an economic system in which
short-term profit is all. There is no
point calling for people to fly less,
while cutting passenger levies and
expanding airports, or extolling
the benefits of heat pumps,
solar panels and better insulation,
while subsidising fossil fuel firms.
To reach net zero as soon as
possible, and to begin to adapt
to the climate changes that are
already “baked in” – ever more
blistering summers, increasingly
destructive wildfires and floods –
we desperately need populations
to be on board. This only makes
sense, however, if governments do
their bit too. No successful public
information campaign has ever
been built on the premise of
“do as I say, not as I do”, so yes,
let’s have the graphic TV images
of what climate breakdown looks
like, the radio shorts exhorting
us to fly only if we have to, the
billboards spurring us to eat less
meat, and to walk and cycle more.
But at the same time, we need to
see government crusades towards
fewer airports, not more, cash
shovelled in the direction of
renewables, not fossil fuels, and
the wholesale climate-proofing
of homes. One endeavour without
the others just won’t cut it. ❚
Bill McGuire is author
of Hothouse Earth:
An inhabitant’s guide
6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 29
Views Columnist
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
is an assistant professor
of physics and astronomy,
and a core faculty member
in women’s studies at the
University of New Hampshire.
Her research in theoretical
physics focuses on cosmology,
neutron stars and particles
beyond the standard model
Chanda’s week
What I’m reading
Von Braun: Dreamer of
space, engineer of war
by Michael Neufeld,
because I wanted to
gain insight into a
problematic figure who
was important to NASA.
What I’m watching
Right now I am all about
the alternative NASA
history television drama
For All Mankind.
What I’m working on
I’m making the case
for why telescopes
are particle physics
experiments.
This column appears
monthly. Up next week:
Graham Lawton
30 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
Field notes from space-time
Emerging from the background General relativity is known as
a background independent theory. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
sets out to explain what this means
L
AST month, I answered
a reader question about
space-time expansion. They
wanted to know what space-time
is expanding into, given that we
scientists tend to analogise with
a balloon that is being blown up.
As I wrote, this analogy has a
flaw because when we blow up
a balloon, it is expanding with
a room in the background.
In reality, space-time has no
background because general
relativity is what we call a
background independent
theory. Which of course invites
the question: “What’s that?”
The problem is this column has
to fit on a single page. I tried to
give a short explanation of
what background independence
means by saying that in relativity,
physical reality is the same no
matter how we map out the
coordinates. My editors, not
surprisingly, felt this was
insufficient. “But the word count!”
I said, while silently agreeing. Then
I promised to tackle the question
in my next column.
Let’s start with a thought that
feels natural: space and time
seem absolute in everyday life.
Albert Einstein compared this to
thinking about a stage on which
the drama of the universe unfolds.
He said this point of view, advanced
by Isaac Newton’s mechanics,
construed space as “a giant vessel
without walls”. In tandem, time
marched forward absolutely and
identically for everyone.
Relativity forced a radical
revision of our understanding of
space. First, taking seriously the
experimental result that the speed
of light is constant meant that
space and time could no longer
be thought of separately. Special
relativity forced us to see that we
were dealing with not space and
time, but instead space-time. This
theory did share something with
the Newtonian perspective: while
space and time were no longer
absolute, they remained a stage
on which events unfolded.
To understand what this
means, consider how we measure
distance. If you want to frame a
painting, you might use a ruler.
This ruler never changes shape
or size. It is our measurement
standard – our metric. There is a
mathematical notion of the metric
that physically aligns with this
idea, and in Newtonian physics
and special relativity, this metric
never changes in time. Moreover,
each point in space-time can be
associated with an absolute
“To preserve this
rule, we have to let
go of the idea that
space-time comes to
us with an absolute
coordinate system”
coordinate location: numbers
that tell us where to find it.
Now, imagine if your ruler
stretched out when you put it near
a more massive object. In other
words, how you measure distance
depends on where you measure
and whether you are near an
object that has mass. Your ruler,
the metric, now depends on its
location in space-time and what
is inside of space-time. This
was the radical revision in our
understanding of space-time
necessitated by the merger of
special relativity with gravity,
which we call general relativity
(or “GR”, as physicists call it).
In Einstein’s general relativity
the metric was no longer absolute
and instead became dynamical: it
could change with space and time.
The implications this had were
profound. It turned out gravity
isn’t really a force – it is space-time
curvature manifesting like a force,
and that curvature is encoded
in the metric, the ruler we use
to measure distances. General
relativity also enforces what we
call a dynamical relationship
between space-time and its
contents. As theoretical physicist
John Wheeler said: “Space-time
tells matter how to move; matter
tells space-time how to… curve.”
Space-time curves around massive
objects, and that curvature affects
how phenomena in space-time
can travel in space-time.
To make this more concrete,
let’s return to the stage. It is
now very weird! It is no longer
fixed and unchanging in the
background. The very shape of the
stage itself depends on whether an
actor is on it, where they are on the
stage, and what they are doing –
for example, if they are rotating,
walking across the stage or simply
standing still. Their presence
shapes the stage and, of course,
the shape of the stage will affect
how someone or something can
move across it. As philosopher
Gordon Belot puts it, space-time –
the stage – is now one of the
actors. Events now happen to
space-time too, not just inside
of it. This is the meaning of
background independence.
Importantly, we can’t see these
effects on a real stage because the
masses involved are too small for
relativistic effects to be visible.
Intuition for background
independence becomes clear in
another way, too. Remember that
the laws of physics are universal,
the same throughout space-time.
In order to preserve this rule, even
while space-time’s geometry can
shift, we have to let go of the idea
that space-time comes to us with
an absolute coordinate system.
The structure of space-time is
independent of our coordinate
background – it is background
independent. ❚
 Discovery
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 DEEPCCZ EXPEDITION, GORDON & BETTY MOORE FOUNDATION / NOAA / PROF CRAIG R SMITH

32 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022

Views Aperture
Fathoms deep

THESE mysterious deep-sea

organisms are among the
55 specimens of marine life
recovered from the seabed of the
Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ)
in the Pacific Ocean, 39 of which
may be species new to science.
The area is of interest for
deep-sea mining due to its rich
mineral deposits. The team on
the DeepCCZ expedition, which
made the finds, used a remotely
operated vehicle to scout out
the zone’s biodiversity and
ecosystems. The work may be
used to manage mining activities
in the future.
“This research is important,
not only due to the number
of potentially new species
discovered, but because these…
specimens have previously
only been studied from seabed
images,” said Guadalupe Bribiesca-
Contreras at the Natural History
Museum, London, who led the
study of the samples, which has
just been published.
The image top left shows an
adult crinoid, a relative of starfish
and sea urchins that is a member
of the family Antedonidae. Known
as feather stars, these creatures
have feathery arms that they can
use to capture food. Top right is a
species of deep-sea sea cucumber
called Oneirophanta mutabilis.
This individual comes in at
16 centimetres long. Both are
potential new species, as is the
glass sponge of the sub-family
Bolosominae, which can be seen
bottom left, anchored to the
sediment before it is collected.
Among the other sea
cucumber species recovered are
the translucent Peniagone vitrea
(bottom centre) and Peniagone
leander (bottom right), which was
damaged during collection. ❚

Gege Li

6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 33

Views Your letters
Editor’s pick
Let’s prepare for a
future of sentient AIs
23 July, p 28
From John Woodgate,
Rayleigh, Essex, UK
If the Google language AI known
as LaMDA isn’t sentient, one day
MEW, NOO or XI will be.
As for flaws in an AI, we are
all born in a “flawed” state of
ignorance, but we aren’t switched
off or killed because of that – we
are taught. Similarly, a sentient but
naive computer needs to be taught
rather than switched off, and should
be equipped with eyes, ears,
temperature sensors and some
sort of proprioception, so that it
feels it has a body.
From David Hodgson, London, UK
I fear that the risk of labelling AIs
as sentient is even more serious
than described. If you were to
follow a certain line of argument,
terminating something that may
develop into a sentient entity
could be viewed as murder.
That would mean that all future
attempts to make LaMDA-like AIs
must be treasured forever once
created. Google’s servers – along
with those belonging to IBM,
Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and
several universities – would
collapse under the load of these
misbegotten but eternal creations.
On the idea that insects
possess consciousness
16 July, p 34
From Peter White, Cardiff, UK
In his review of Lars Chittka’s book
The Mind of a Bee, Alun Anderson
calls the idea that bees might have
consciousness “radical”. Radical it
may be, but it isn’t unprecedented.
In 2016, Andrew Barron and Colin
Klein proposed that insects have
consciousness; Todd Feinberg and
Jon Mallatt put forward in 2013
that consciousness emerged in a
species of fish 520 million years
ago; and in 2017, Paco Calvo argued
that plants might have a form of
34 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
consciousness. It seems that
speculation about consciousness
in other species is quite welcome
these days.
The problem is, if consciousness
is so widespread among living
things, then the chances of being
born a human are tiny: I should
have been a beetle or a plant.
I find this disconcerting.
From Ros Groves,
Watford, Hertfordshire, UK
The possibility of consciousness
in insects is inferred on the basis
of what we perceive as skills, such
as communication, navigation,
counting and so forth. One must
ask, however, if these insects have
the capacity to reflect on and
repurpose these skills as we do?
Could these abilities be likened
more to inbuilt mechanisms,
such as how our skin seemingly
“knows” the various intricate
stages of repair, stopping when
the task is complete, or how
our hearts and lungs, though
incapable of conscious self-
reflection, can immediately gauge
the precise amount of blood and
oxygen required to support a
variety of activities?
Scientists are right to fear
anthropomorphism; it becomes
inevitable when we can quantify
animal consciousness only via
the limited prism of our own.
From Philip Thonemann,
London, UK
Sometimes a bee will get trapped
inside my window. When I try to
help it out with a piece of card, I
often get the impression that, as I
approach, the wildly buzzing bee
calms down, crawls onto the card
and waits hopefully until moved
to a place where it can easily fly
away. I thought I was imagining
this behaviour, but after reading
your book review I am not so sure.
Want to get in touch?
Send letters to letters@newscientist.com;
see terms at newscientist.com/letters
Letters sent to New Scientist, Northcliffe House,
2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT will be delayed
Why we do like to
be beside the seaside
16 July, p 38
From Brian Evans,
Feniton, Devon, UK
“Into the blue” describes many
positive effects on our well-being
that come from being near the
sea, and speculates on possible
reasons for them. One additional
explanation could be the level
and quality of the light.
Even on a dull day here in
the UK, the light is brighter at the
coast than a few miles inland. It is
also no coincidence that coastal
towns are popular with artists of
many types. Could it be that the
polarisation of light reflected from
water affects us in a positive way?
From Nicola Hutchison,
Harlow, Essex, UK
We are told that engaging with
nature is better than passive
exposure, but warned that the
benefits tail off after a certain
point. I suggest this is because the
engagement we make is shallow,
skimming the surface. We need
humanity to once more become
a grateful, respectful, integrated
part of the ecosystem.
Let’s dare to ask: what do we
really want the future to be like?
The science is telling us we want
it to be green and blue – let’s start
making the bold changes needed
to make it that way.
One way to stop
plague revolutions
23 July, p 42
From Richard Brown,
Huntly, Aberdeenshire, UK
“Going viral” suggests large
societal upheavals my occur due
to plagues. Perhaps we can avert
this. One abiding memory I have
of crossing borders 50 years ago
is that there were three desks to
clear, immigration, customs and
health. Checks at the last of those
included up-to-date, certified
vaccination for yellow fever,
typhoid, cholera and smallpox.
In many countries, we appear
to have dropped the health check.
This has cost us. As a species, we
might be well advised to revisit
tried-and-tested practices. After
all, more novel diseases may be
coming our way.
The world burns as
politicians campaign
Letters, 16 July
From Bruce Denness,
Niton, Isle of Wight, UK
Steve Blyth is right to question
whether politicians and others
will accept the changes in living
standards necessary to control
global warming. Recently, as the
UK saw its highest temperatures
on record, every candidate to be
the country’s next prime minister
professed that they wished to
grow the economy. Yet none of
them explained how that could
be done while meeting the UK’s
legal commitment to net zero
by 2050. In the meantime, global
atmospheric carbon dioxide has
continued its relentless increase.
Do mini-brains create a
consciousness dilemma?
23 July, p 38
From Eric Kvaalen,
Les Essarts-le-Roi, France
If consciousness arises out
of brains, then we should
stop experiments with brain
organoids. If it doesn’t, then
we should reject materialistic
theories of consciousness. ❚
For the record
❚  In “Age-defying food” (2 July,
p 38), the main target of the
amino-acid restriction diet
should have been methionine.
❚  Our cold-brew coffee recipe
should have said add 500ml
of water (9 July, p 51).
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Views Culture
Rewilding the world
The challenge of returning lost species to ecosystems in countries affected
by conflict adds complexity to this rewilding story, says Jack Ashby
Book
Wilder
Millie Kerr
Bloomsbury Sigma
REWILDING is such a popular
topic – there is a steady stream
of books about returning habitats
to a more “natural” version of
themselves – that it could almost
become a separate literary genre.
But Millie Kerr’s Wilder: How
rewilding is transforming
conservation and changing the
world stands apart from the pack.
Rather than following the
outcome of returning wolves to
Yellowstone National Park in the
US, herbivores to Dutch marshes
or beavers to British waterways,
Kerr (a lawyer-cum-journalist)
largely focuses on the return of
once-lost species to African, Asian
and South American ecosystems.
This enables her to introduce
the challenging interplay between
conservation and the devastating
events of, say, Mozambique’s civil
war. That war was partially funded
by elephant poaching, and, by the
end of the conflict, the country’s
Gorongosa National Park had lost
93 per cent of its mammalian
biomass to hunting.
Kerr explains how the
definition of rewilding is up
for debate. She raises interesting
ideas, such as whether simply
turning the lights out in human
environments is a form of
rewilding, creating what
conservationist Varun Goswami
calls “dark corridors” –
connections between habitats
through which animals are
happier to move.
It is clear that Kerr’s own
definition of rewilding is largely
synonymous with complex
reintroductions. The historical
stories she tells are particularly
36 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
captivating, such as the chapter on
Richard Henry, a rewilding pioneer
who relocated 572 kākāpōs and
kiwis to Resolution Island in the
1890s. Sadly, all the birds died
due to the influx of introduced
“Kerr raises interesting
ideas – is turning
the lights out in
human environments
a form of rewilding?”
predators (New Zealand’s
enduring scourge), but it did
establish a model for more recent
attempts to save the country’s
threatened birds using island arks.
The focus on the people
and events involved in animal
translocations means that little
space is given to the specifics of
Back from the brink:
(top) kākāpōs; (below)
scimitar-horned oryx
oryx was probably shot in Chad
in 1989, but 12,000 may live on
private land in Texas today, for
hunting, safari-like experiences
or just for their owners’ personal
entertainment. I found this hard
to comprehend, but perhaps I
should be less surprised by the
captive animal industry in the
US after watching the true crime
documentary series Tiger King,
LEFT: ROLAND SEITRE/NATUREPL.COM; TOP: LIU YANG/GETTY IMAGES
about the life of former zookeeper
and convicted felon Joe Exotic.
Kerr explains how zoo
historians pieced together the
genetic origins of the captive oryx
involved in the global breeding
programme. This programme
returned the species to the wild
in Chad in 2016.
Despite the fact that those
animals came from zoos across
the world, most of the oryx alive
today (including those at Kerr’s
grandparents’ ranch) are
descended from between 40 and
what happened once key species 50 animals from Chad. The fact
were returned to their former that they originated from just two
ranges, and I would have capture events in the 1960s means
appreciated reading more about that they aren’t quite as diverse
the ecological consequences. genetically as might have been
But the projects Kerr covers are expected from the geographical
engrossing and each one could distribution of the founding
have been the subject of a book, animals in zoos around the
dealing with social outcomes, world. Nonetheless, there are
politics and animal personalities. now 400 oryx back in the wild.
Kerr makes each story personal, Wilder is overwhelmingly
primarily exploring projects she dedicated to sharing the positives
is connected to, often ones she and successes of animal
has visited. But she didn’t need reintroductions, and Kerr’s
to travel to North Africa to see personal narratives are just one
scimitar-horned oryx – the poster reason why it is a very readable
species for the reintroduction of and enjoyable tale. ❚
animals that were extinct in the
wild. She had spent her youth Jack Ashby is a zoologist at the
among them on her grandparents’ University Museum of Zoology,
ranch in Texas, where oryx, zebras Cambridge, UK, and author of
and ostriches roamed free. Platypus Matters: The extraordinary
The last wild scimitar-horned story of Australian mammals

It’s only a movie…
Why do we love scary films? How do their makers get
under our skin? Elle Hunt explores a book that dares to ask
Book
Nightmare Fuel
Nina Nesseth
Tor Nightfire
I HAVE friends who are so afraid
of sharks that they won’t swim in
the sea – no matter how enclosed
the harbour, or full the beach.
When I went cage diving with great
whites last year, they were appalled.
Yet at the same time, I noticed,
they couldn’t wait to see the footage.
This illustrates the idiosyncratic
and inexplicable nature of fear.
While our desires tend to run along
consistent lines – love, happiness,
health and wealth – what frightens
us is often intensely personal and
even perverse.
So how do film-makers petrify
their audiences? And why do we
keep watching? Nina Nesseth sets
out to find answers in Nightmare
Fuel: The science of horror films.
The science writer and scary movie
buff unites her passions in this
book, which is equally a popular
science look at the psychology that
Is allowing ourselves to be
scared about seeking out new
experiences and sensations?
Don’t miss
underpins screen scares and a doesn’t is why we enthusiastically Watch
love letter to the horror genre. trigger them. The essential paradox Nope is Jordan Peele’s
The two, after all, have to be of horror films has been explained latest chiller featuring
assessed together: as Nesseth as “benign masochism”, akin to Daniel Kaluuya, who
points out in her introduction, eating hot chillies or skydiving: starred in his earlier film
the mark of a good horror film isn’t the pleasure of venturing past our Get Out. Ranch owners
“was it good?”, but “was it scary?”. innate fears and cautions in search spot something in the
Since director Georges Méliès of new experiences and sensations. Californian sky. They will
depicted the devil in 1896’s The But horror movies play on our wish it was the cloud it
Devil’s Castle, credited as the first psychology, too. As Nesseth writes, resembles. UK cinemas
horror film, there is very little that the scare is effective “because you from 12 August.
hasn’t been played for scares, know it’s coming”, making you
from the obviously threatening complicit in your pleasurable
(serial killers, outer space) to the anticipation, in your own terror.
previously innocuous (clowns). Here, the science of scary movies
Given the breadth of the genre, goes beyond biological responses
Nesseth defines horror by its and cognitive processing to cunning
promise “to make you feel fear”. storytelling. Terrifying an audience,
Through research, interviews whether by designing a compelling
and case studies, she explores the monster or channelling societal
ways it delivers on this, from sound unease, requires a lot of knowledge Read
design and editing to simulated about emotions and empathy, Methuselah’s Zoo
blood, starting with the impact say Nesseth’s interviewees. is by animal longevity
of horror on the brain and body. Nesseth also explores the specialist Steven Austad,
Humans evolved the ability to perennial question of whether who asks what we can
process and remember fear – along screen violence desensitises or even learn from long-living
with responses such as fight, flight, primes us for it in real life, but she animals such as
freeze or vomit – because those draws no easy conclusions because centuries-old sharks
who detect danger quickly are more the research is too patchy. Yet the and tube worms. It is
likely to survive. We remain so alert decade-by-decade change she best to study them in
that researchers have found that shows in what scares us is revealing the wild, says Austad.
even subliminal images of snakes about the concerns of the times. On sale 16 August.
can activate a threat response. She points to Roman Polanski’s
Clearly fear mechanisms make 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby, as well
good evolutionary sense. What as later pregnancy horrors released
after the 1973 Roe v Wade decision
on abortion. Then there are recent
culturally informed films such as
Jordan Peele’s Get Out (see more
in Don’t Miss, right) and Ari Aster’s
Midsommar. At the start of the
covid-19 pandemic, there was a Visit
ISHAN @SEEFROMTHESKY/UNSPLASH; UNIVERSAL PICTURES
spike in streams of medical thriller Neofossils are plastics
Contagion. This year, Alex Garland’s made from biomass
Men skewers toxic masculinity. that could sequester
Horror films, Nesseth suggests, a gigatonne of carbon
may be a way of processing reality dioxide from the air
at a seemingly safe remove. As she every year, says chemist
TUAN TRAN/GETTY IMAGES
writes: “You can repeat to yourself, Tony Ryan. Hear his
‘It’s only a movie’.” ❚ plans at the Royal
Institution, London, at
Elle Hunt is a writer 7pm BST on 11 August.
based in Norfolk, UK
6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 37
Views Culture
The film column

The hardest journey An intriguing documentary about the life and adventures
of Ranulph Fiennes, one of the last hero-explorers of our time, packs an altogether
different punch at the end, discovers Simon Ings

Ranulph Fiennes: his

expeditions were the
last of their kind

after hauling a sled out of polar

water that shouldn’t have been
water. Far from slipping into
tenuous relevance, Fiennes is,
for many, a ravaged poster child
Simon Ings is a novelist and of the climate crisis.
science writer. Follow him on People who complain about
Instagram at @simon_ings such expeditions are rather like
those who complain about us
ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY/ALAMY

“mucking about in outer space”;

EXPLORER is a documentary about
Ranulph Fiennes, who led the first
Film
expedition to circumnavigate
Explorer
Earth from pole to pole without
Matthew Dyas
recourse to flight.
On release now
Its subject emerges slowly from
snatches of past documentaries,
Simon also interviews, home movies and
recommends... headlines. The film touts Fiennes’s
Film
unknowability: a risky strategy
The Great White for those new to the man and his
Silence
achievements, though in time it
Herbert G. Ponting
pays off handsomely for director
Herbert Ponting expands Matthew Dyas.
the official record of Robert Fiennes isn’t motivated by
Falcon Scott’s fateful South mysterious and delicate internal
Pole expedition with diary
forces; this is someone driven by
extracts, animations and
ghosts. Four months before his
photographs. A haunting
birth, Fiennes’s father was killed
testament and masterpiece
by a German landmine in Italy. His
of reconstruction.
grandfather also died serving his
country. Young Ranulph intended
Book
to follow in their footsteps.
Explorers of the Brought up in a household of
New Century indomitable women, he wanted to
Magnus Mills
live up to the father he never knew.
Bloomsbury
But it was Fiennes’s first wife
Two rival teams (English and
and childhood sweetheart, Ginny,
Norwegian) race to a ghastly
who devised the expedition that
wasteland. Mills’s pastiche
made him a household name and
anatomises the awfulness
her the first woman to be awarded
of the explorer’s lot.
the Polar Medal. Seven years in the
planning, Fiennes’s Transglobe
Expedition ran from 1979 to 1982.
It was, with hindsight, the last of
the “hero” expeditions. Satellite
photography and instantaneous
communication have made
such adventures redundant and
undermined notions of physical
heroism. In an era of extinctions
“Ranulph Fiennes
has become one of
the most eloquent
witnesses to our
biggest crisis”
and climate change, the idea of a
human pitting themselves against
nature has acquired a slightly
“off” flavour.
And yet, Fiennes has become
one of the most eloquent
witnesses to our biggest crisis.
Naysayers will maintain there is
something rotten at the heart of
a white man’s exploration of what
to him are far-off places. But since
1984, Fiennes’s expeditions point
to something that should agitate
us more: the ice itself is rotting
all over the world. He lost fingers
they wildly overestimate the costs
while underestimating the value
generated. Transglobe was put
together from favours, donations
and sponsors. Careers were
created in countless fields, and 650
companies reaped the rewards of
being associated with it.
Fiennes and Ginny were unable
to have children. When they tried
to adopt, they were turned down
because they didn’t have a stable
income. Fiennes still struggles
with money, he says. In his late
70s, remarried after Ginny died
and a father of one, he is shown
plying the lecture circuit, driving
many hours between venues and
sleeping in his car to save money.
The film shows him stomping
through winter surf to ease
the symptoms of suspected
Parkinson’s disease: this man
is, by his own admission, still
struggling to live up to his father.
Pushing himself to the limit of
his declining powers, he comes
into focus at last as a tragic figure.
But what is tragedy, if not a way
of giving shape and meaning to
a life that, by definition, is bound
to end in decline and death?
Explorer’s achievement is
to reach the source of Fiennes’s
heroism. The explorations, while
staggering accomplishments, are
mere way stations. The goal is a life
that has squeezed as much good
out of the world as it can. ❚

38 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022

To advertise here please email Ryan.Buczman@mailmetromedia.co.uk or call 020 3615 1151 6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 39
Features Cover story
Cracking
the code
Much of the world’s first writing, carved
into clay tablets, is undeciphered. Now, AI is
helping us piece together this strange script,
revealing incredible stories of civilisations
at the dawn of history, finds Alison George
B
EHIND a locked door in the British
Museum, London, there is a beautiful
library with high, arched ceilings. Inside
this secret room, Irving Finkel opens a drawer
and pulls out a clay tablet. Cracked and burnt,
it is imprinted with the tiny characters of the
world’s oldest written language. It is a list of
omens. Another drawer reveals another tablet.
“This is a prayer to the god Markuk,” says
Finkel, who is assistant keeper of ancient
Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures
at the museum, and one of only a handful of
people in the world who can read this long-
dead script, known as cuneiform, fluently.
Behind us, a photographer is meticulously
capturing images of this writing, with lights
positioned to highlight the indented etchings.
This work is part of a revolution, one that is
using today’s computing power to bring this
5000-year-old record back to life and unlock
new secrets of the world’s first civilisation.
Although this system of writing was
deciphered 165 years ago (See “Reading the
signs”, page 42), the majority of texts that
use it have never been translated into modern
languages – a fiendishly complicated task that
relies on experts such as Finkel. Now, thanks to
40 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
developments in artificial intelligence,
computers are being trained to read and
translate cuneiform, to put fragmented tablets
back together to recreate ancient libraries and
even predict bits of missing text. These tools
are enabling the earliest works of literature to
be read in full for the first time since antiquity,
giving insights into stories that later appeared
in the Bible and shedding light on civilisations
at the dawn of history.
The story of cuneiform begins around
6000 years ago in Mesopotamia, the fertile
region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
that is now Iraq, when there was a shift from
living in small agricultural settlements to large
urban centres. Here, the Sumerian people built
the first city states. Uruk was one of the most
important. With temple complexes and a canal
system, it was home to up to 50,000 people by
3000 BC, and was the administrative hub for
the region with a bureaucracy to manage the
complex system of labour that had developed.
Although these people spoke a language
(Sumerian) that is completely different from
CHRIS MALBON
any other that we know of, and has long since
died out, we have an incredible record of their
lives because, as far as we know, it is here that
writing originated. It was made by pressing
the end of a reed into moist clay to make
wedge-like shapes, giving this script its
modern name: cuneiform, from the Latin
cuneus, which means wedge.
Although we now associate writing
with poetry and literature, this early example
was nothing of the sort. It was used solely for
administrative purposes, to keep track of the
transfer of slaves, for instance, or the receipt of
animals. A typical example shown to me at the
British Museum is a record of rations of beer,
with a drawing of a jar denoting the beer, a
person’s head and circles to signify the
amount. Soon, these pictographic signs
evolved to became increasingly abstract.
It took a long time for cuneiform to shift
from record-keeping to a tool for linguistic
expression. The first royal inscriptions
appeared around 2700 BC, and the earliest
literary texts a hundred or so years later. One
of the first known authors was Enheduanna, a
princess, priestess and poet who lived around
4300 years ago. She wrote many hymns and
the myth of Inanna and Ebih, which recounts
a conflict between a goddess and a mountain.
The most famous text of all is the Epic of
Gilgamesh, about a king’s quest for eternal life,
and includes a section that appears to be a
precursor to the biblical story of the flood.
The impact of Sumerian culture still ripples
through our lives today, not only through
our biblical stories, but in our clocks. Their
sexagesimal counting system, with a base
of 60, is the reason why we have 60 seconds
in a minute and 360 degrees in a circle.

Ancient letters
Cuneiform itself isn’t a language, but a writing
system, similar to how the letters used to write
English can also be used for French or German.
Sumerian eventually died out. The cuneiform
script, meanwhile, lived on and became the
written form of many other languages, such
as Akkadian, Hittite and Old Persian. It was
in use for 3000 years before it, too, died out,
recording the births and deaths of ancient
kingdoms. We know this thanks to the clay that
cuneiform was inscribed on: a cheap, readily
available and durable material. “It’s fortunate
for us, because any tablet that was ever written
survives, unless it was thrown in the river >

6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 41


or smashed completely,” says Finkel.
Thousands of these tablets are around
today, forming a key part of the world’s
cultural heritage. They are chronicles of our
planet’s first great empires, as well as hymns,
letters, shopping lists and even customer
complaints. “People say the first half of human
history is only recorded in these cuneiform
tablets,” says Enrique Jiménez at Ludwig
Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.
Deciphering the past
New secrets from the tablets are constantly
being revealed. In 2017, a small, 3700-year-old
tablet known as Plimpton 322 was revealed
as the world’s oldest trigonometric table,
showing that the Babylonians – Akkadian-
speaking people living in central and southern
Mesopotamia – not the Greeks, were the first
to study trigonometry. And last year, a new
analysis of a tablet excavated in Iraq in 1894
showed that the Babylonians calculated with
triangles centuries before Pythagoras. Yet with
only around 75 people who can read cuneiform
fluently, the majority of tablets lie unread,
gathering dust in the back rooms of museums.
One issue is that cuneiform is incredibly
complex. “The script is very ambiguous.
There is no single way of writing a word,” says
Jiménez. In addition, most of the tablets are
incomplete. The majority of cuneiform tablets
are broken, chipped or smashed to pieces.
Often, the edges have crumbled away, leaving
stories without beginnings or ends, or with
gaps in the narrative.
AGEFOTOSTOCK/ALAMY
42 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
This is the case for the world’s oldest
surviving royal library, that of King
Ashurbanipal of the Assyrian Empire. In the
city of Nineveh, close to modern-day Mosul
in northern Iraq, Ashurbanipal assembled
a vast library of written works from across
Mesopotamia. This amounted to 30,000
tablets, containing everything from rituals,
medical encyclopaedias, astronomical
observations and the exploits of royals.
The writer H. G. Wells called it “the most
precious source of historical material in
the world”, but it was reduced to rubble and
burned when the city was sacked in 612 BC.
I see evidence of this first-hand during my trip
to the British Museum, where the remnants
of this library are now stored, their blackened
scorch marks still visible.
Piecing these fragments together is like
assembling a number of complex jigsaw
puzzles whose pieces have become jumbled
up, with no picture on the boxes to tell you
what to aim for, says Jiménez. What’s more,
fragments from the same tablet can be
scattered around the world. “There’s a
tablet where there’s a piece in Chicago,
which joins a piece in Berlin and a piece here,”
says Finkel. Putting the puzzle back together
is a painstaking process that relies on luck
and memory. It took more than 100 years to
identify the beginning of the Epic of Gilgamesh
in a small fragment stored in a museum
drawer, for instance. But now computers
are involved, things are changing.
The Fragmentarium, part of the Electronic
Babylonian Literature project, set up by
Plimpton 322, a
Babylonian clay
tablet containing
ancient mathematics
Reading
the signs
Cuneiform would probably never have
been deciphered without the Behistun
Inscription. This trilingual monument
high up an inaccessible mountain in Iran
is the cuneiform version of the Rosetta
Stone, another ancient trilingual text
that proved to be the key to cracking
Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The Behistun Inscription was carved
around 520 BC to commemorate a
rebellion quashed by the Persian King
Darius, with versions in three different
cuneiform languages – all undeciphered
at the time when Western explorers first
climbed up some wobbly ladders to
make copies of it in 1764.
The first of these languages to
be cracked was Old Persian. From
the way that names such as Darius
were written, another script on the
monument could be deciphered.
This turned out to be Akkadian,
an extinct language spoken in ancient
Mesopotamia (see main story).
“The Akkadian tongue gradually gave
up its secrets,” says Irving Finkel at the
British Museum in London. “Without
that key, I don’t think anyone could
have ever done it.”
From there, it was relatively
straightforward to crack the original
cuneiform language – Sumerian –
using the many bilingual texts where
scribes had written in Akkadian and
underneath had added a Sumerian
translation.
 Jiménez in 2018, is using AI to reassemble
Ashurbanipal’s library and other great
collections written in cuneiform by working
out which fragments belong together. To do
this, Jiménez is using algorithms developed to
compare different variants of gene sequences,
based on the fact that there are often multiple
copies of the same text with minor variations.
The AI can be trained on transliterations of
these texts, in which cuneiform characters
have been written in the Latin alphabet
SHUTTERSTOCK/VIACHESLAV LOPATIN

according to the way they sound (in the same

way that Chinese characters can be written in
Pinyin, their Mandarin pronunciation). The
AI can then predict which cuneiform signs
are likely to be in the missing segments. It
can also search for a particular cuneiform
sign in a huge database of fragments.
In 2019, this approach assisted with the
identification of several missing pieces of the
Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as revealing a new A wall relief of King archive, dating from around 2300 BC, show
genre of ancient literature: a text consisting of Ashurbanipal’s lion that a female supervisor named Mama-ummi
parodies (including jokes about donkey dung) hunt (above), and was in charge of a team of 180 weavers, and
that was used by school children to help them a depiction of the that there were surprisingly varied job
learn to write. And together with Anmar Fadhil cuneiform poet opportunities for women at the time.
at the University of Baghdad in Iraq, Jiménez Enheduanna (below) To help wade through this sea of
is also piecing together another previously administrative information, the Machine
unknown genre, a hymn to a city, in this case Translation and Automated Analysis of
the city of Babylon, featuring details of temple Cuneiform Languages project was set up in
life and cultic prostitutes. 2017 by Heather Baker at the University of
Then last year, in the world’s first Toronto, and coordinated by Pagé-Perron.
fully autonomous cuneiform fragment In the most recent experiments, different
identification using AI, a missing piece of algorithms trained on 45,500 transliterated
the famous Poem of the Righteous Sufferer phrases, each consisting of up to 19 words,
(which explores the question of why bad were tested for their ability to translate
things happen to good people, and seems Sumerian words into English. Results
to be a precursor to the biblical Book of Job) published last year show that one particular
was identified. “Humans would have missed algorithm could translate with an accuracy
this,” says Jiménez. of 95 per cent. The system also pulls out key
Other researchers have turned their information from the texts, identifying
attention to the seemingly mundane categories such as people, places and gods.
administrative tablets. “There’s a multitude Last year, computer scientist Gabriel
of small receipt texts – written traces of Stanovsky at the Hebrew University of
transactions that occur between different “People say Jerusalem and his colleagues found a way to
institutions such as temples or the palace of predict the text on missing parts of fragments,
the local ruler, or among individuals such as the first half in a similar way to that of automatic prediction
merchants,” says Émilie Pagé-Perron at the of words on mobile phones. They used a deep-
University of Oxford. Collectively, they hold of human learning AI, feeding it transliterations from
HOBERMAN PUBLISHING/ALAMY

a wealth of information that cuts to the heart 10,000 cuneiform tablets, written in Akkadian,
of the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia. history is only and found that it could suggest contextually
Sumerian texts, for instance, often contain the correct words to fill the gaps with an accuracy of
name of individuals and dates, meaning it is recorded in 89 per cent.
possible to trace a person’s role in society. For Another potential application of AI is the
instance, 80 tablets known as the Mama-ummi these tablets” dating of tablets whose origin is unknown. >

6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 43

 New Scientist audio
You can now listen to many articles – look for the
headphones icon in our app newscientist.com/app

Cuneiform tablets
can be viewed at the
British Museum

“If we know the dates for certain documents,

we can train the algorithm to predict the
missing dates for others,” says Stanovsky.
Deciphering cuneiform from its
transliteration is one thing. Reading the

WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/ALAMY; DINENDRA HARIA/ALAMY

cuneiform characters themselves is quite
another. Not only does the cuneiform
script evolve over time, but spellings vary
considerably, and the script was also used for
different languages at different times. “The
other thing to keep in mind is we’re dealing
with handwriting from individual scribes,”
says Miller Prosser at the University of Chicago.
On top of this, there are no gaps between signs,
so it is difficult to work out which group of
wedges forms a character. And whereas the
Latin alphabet contains 26 letters, there are
more than 900 different cuneiform signs,
which can appear remarkably similar.
Despite this, computers are beginning to
make inroads into reading cuneiform signs,
using the same kind of computer vision
systems used for text recognition. For instance,
Prosser and his colleagues have trained a
machine learning system called Deepscribe to
detect signs on thousands of tablets from the
Persepolis Fortification Archive – a trove of
administrative texts written in the Elamite
language from around 500 BC, found in a
fortification wall. “The ability of a computer
to identify the boundaries of a sign and draw
a box around it is a huge achievement on its
own. No one usually knows where one sign
ends and the next sign begins,” says Susanne
Paulus, also at the University of Chicago and
part of the team that carried out this work.
Instant translation
The hope is to eventually link sign recognition
systems with modern language translation
systems. This would mean that we could take a
picture with our phone of a tablet in a museum
and get an instant read-out of what it says.
None of these efforts would be possible
without large digital databases of texts to
provide as much data as possible to train
algorithms – so they can learn, for example,
which words are likely to be written next to
each other. Yet, of the half a million cuneiform
texts in the world’s museums, only half have
been transliterated or translated, and only
“One problem
is that we are
dealing with
handwriting
of individual
scribes”
around 100,000 are available digitally. Efforts
such as the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
and Electronic Babylonian Literature project
are now making great strides to boost these
digital archives.
“Having the tools to digitise large volumes
of text brings a lot of new information and new
connections to scholars,” says Shai Gordin at
Ariel University, Israel. “I think the next big
breakthrough will come once we can put this
information in a large network of connections.
This way, we can build a portfolio of the life
of ancient people.”
That process starts with the painstaking
work of taking high-quality images of
all tablets held in museums and private
collections around the world. That is exactly
what is going on behind me at the British
Museum, where images of all 40,000 smashed
pieces of Ashurbanipal’s library are being
captured as part of the Electronic Babylonian
Literature project. In a special desktop photo
studio, photographer Alberto Giannese takes
six images of each cuneiform tablet – front,
back, top, bottom and sides. The text doesn’t
always stop at the edges, says Giannese, and
even distinguishing front from back and top
from bottom can be hard.
The six images are then automatically
stitched together by computer software and
deciphered and translated by cuneiform
experts such as Jiménez. By 2023, the entire
collection of images will be available to the
public. Not everyone can visit the secret back
rooms of museums, but soon we will all be
able to view Ashurbanipal’s library and
many other long-lost cuneiform texts
from the comfort of our homes.
As my visit to the arched library of the
British Museum ends and I join the crowds
thronging to the exhibitions, I feel blown away
at what I have just experienced – travelling
back in time to witness the written thoughts of
people from thousands of years ago, then back
to the future to see these fractured ancient
texts in the process of being reassembled again
and decoded, this time in the digital realm.
I think Ashurbanipal would be proud. ❚
Alison George is a feature
editor at New Scientist

44 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022

Features Interview

NABIL NEZZAR

Blasts from the past

Ludovic Ferrière is one of the few scientists searching Earth
for undiscovered impact craters from asteroids and comets.
He tells Joshua Howgego why it is so important

C
RATERS caused by the impact of
asteroids or comets long ago are
more common on Earth than you
might think. They are just a good deal trickier
to locate than those peppering the barren,
unchanging surface of the moon. However,
finding them can reveal details of prehistoric
events that have had a lasting impact, as
typified by the crater left behind by the
asteroid impact that ended the reign of the
dinosaurs. Geologist Ludovic Ferrière is the
curator of the meteorite collection at the
Natural History Museum Vienna in Austria,
but he has a sideline in crater hunting – a
difficult and dangerous pursuit that has
taken him to some of the world’s most remote
places and even seen him spend time in jail.
Joshua Howgego: Why do you want to find
undiscovered craters?
Ludovic Ferrière: What motivates me most
of all – apart from the adventure of travelling
to these remote places – is the possibility
of making a new discovery. This is nothing
unusual we humans want to discover new
things, we are a curious species.
From a scientific point of view, people get
excited about impact craters because we now
know that one single asteroid impact can have
consequences on the scale of the whole planet,
like the Chicxulub impactor, a 12-kilometre-
wide asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years
ago near where the coast of Mexico is today.
It left behind a crater roughly 180 kilometres
wide – one of the largest confirmed impact
structures of its kind – and led to the extinction
of 75 per cent of all the plant and animal species
on the planet at the time, including all non-
avian dinosaurs. It changed the course of >

6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 45

evolution on Earth. If it hadn’t happened,
we wouldn’t be here. So finding new craters
on Earth helps us better understand the
history of our planet’s bombardment and
the consequences for the environment –
close by or at the planetary scale, as well
as in the atmosphere.
Of course, it’s also interesting to document
craters to better understand the physics of
these huge impacts, for example, how rocks
behave and get ejected from them. There are
economic reasons to hunt them, too. Quite a
large number of impact craters are associated
with resources such as nickel or hydrocarbons,
though that is not really my main concern.
Crater hunting covers quite a lot of ground,
then, no pun intended.
Yeah. Another important aspect is that
craters act as traps for sediments. You have
this depression that you can date precisely,
from radioactive isotopes, for example, and
this then starts to fill with sediments from
a known time in the past. There have been
a few cases where these craters have formed
in places where sediments don’t otherwise
accumulate, making them sources of unique
climate records.
One example of this is the El’gygytgyn
crater in north-east Siberia, which was drilled
by the International Continental Scientific
Drilling Program in 2009. Samples from this
area that provide a record of the past climate
are very rare, but this crater provided an
unbroken record of 2.8 million years of
Arctic climate change.
How many craters do we know of on Earth
and how many are left to find?
Some colleagues and I are working on
reviewing this at the moment and centralising
all the data on craters under the umbrella
of the Meteoritical Society. I usually say the
number of known craters is “200 plus a few”
because there are a few that we are fairly sure
are impact craters, but they are not quite
confirmed yet.
On the moon there are more than 1 million
impact craters with a diameter greater than
JOHANNES BAIER (CC BY 3.0)
1 kilometre. However, we don’t expect to find
as many as that down here. We have plate
tectonics on Earth, and this means most of
the oldest rocks and early impact record have
been erased. Also, weathering and so on
46 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
buries craters, so the oldest ones are either not
preserved or completely buried, and you need
to drill to get to them. I think we have probably
already found most of the really big craters.
But there may be dozens, if not hundreds,
of smaller ones left to find.
How do you look for undiscovered craters?
Most often, I start from lists of possible impact
sites. There are a lot of these out there where
people have reported circular features they
have found. Many of them are obviously
volcanoes or whatever. But in a few cases they
are good impact crater candidates. I start from
there, looking at satellite images, geological
maps and other publications to compile all the
available information. Very often, these things
are in remote places, which is why the data
available is quite limited. Then you have to
go out and look for the rocks that can prove
this is an impact crater.
During an impact, you have a huge release
of energy and searing temperatures, which
“These are
only formed in
nature during
a meteorite
impact”
The distinctive striations
on shatter cones are
evidence of impact craters
shapes and transforms rocks and minerals, so
they are quite different from what you would
expect of their original environment.
One thing I look for when in the field is
shatter cones, which are rocks with distinctive
cone-shaped striations on their surface. We
know these are only formed in nature during
a meteorite impact, due to the propagation
of shock waves that generate this unique
fracture pattern. These are the only rocks that,
if you identify them in the field, you can say,
“Bingo, I found a new impact crater.” They are
exciting to find.
The other thing you do is collect samples
and take them back to the lab where you
can use a microscope to look for telltale
minerals called shocked quartz – quartz
grains containing deformations. I get samples
sent to me from people all around the world.
Sometimes people who are not necessarily
geologists send me samples from a crater they
think they have discovered. By characterising
the shocked quartz grains, we can not only
confirm it is an impact crater, but also do
things like estimate the shock pressure
[the forces the rock experienced due to the
impact] – we ideally want to be able to describe
exactly what happened in these events.
I have just published results about a
7-kilometre-wide structure known as Nova
Colinas, in Brazil, which has long been a
suspected impact crater. My collaborators
and I have found shocked quartz grains,
which prove that it is indeed an impact crater,
the 11th known in the whole of South America.
Can anyone get involved in hunting craters?
There is a French citizen science platform
I am involved in called Vigie-Cratère [which
translates as “Lookout for craters”]. We wanted
to start from scratch and provide everyone
with access to this very specific satellite
imagery, so-called shaded relief, which helps
you see circular depressions invisible on
standard satellite imagery. We have definitely
found a few good crater candidates through
this method.
I also want to use artificial intelligence for
this work. There were a few attempts decades
ago, but it didn’t really work. If you just ask
AI to look for a circular feature it finds them
everywhere and circles a lot of rubbish;
sometimes I think this job would be easier
if impact craters were square. The idea now

MARSHALL IKONOGRAPHY/ALAMY
SHUTTERSTOCK/ANA MONTANO
SHUTTERSTOCK/MATT DEAKIN
is to train an AI on the citizen science data,
which should make it more effective.
What is it like hunting craters out in the field?
In 2013, some colleagues found a possible
impact crater on satellite imagery. It was
7 kilometres in diameter in eastern Gabon,
right next to the border with the Republic of
the Congo. In 2019, my PhD student and I
decided to go there to get rock samples. After
crossing the whole of Gabon, we reached the
proposed impact site and were told that we
were actually in Congo. The border is obviously
not as clear as it seems on maps and GPS. We
did not have permission to be in Congo and
were arrested by some police officers. Luckily,
before being taken to a jail, I asked if I could
take a shower. They let me do that, but I didn’t
really want to take a shower – I wanted to go
down to a river and collect a few samples of
rocks and sand.
How did you manage to conceal those in jail?
I just put the samples in with my belongings
and they never checked. We were in jail for
four days. When we got back, I looked at the
sand under a microscope hoping to find
some shocked quartz grains. But we didn’t find
anything and so we haven’t proved that this is
an impact crater yet. I need to go back there.
You have had more successful expeditions, right?
The most exciting one was about 13 years ago,
when we went to the Democratic Republic
of the Congo (DRC). From satellite images,
the crater shows up as an amazing, circular,
complex feature that is 17 kilometres in
diameter. When you see something that big
and with such a characteristic morphology,
I mean, it cannot be anything else except an
impact crater. No one had confirmed it, though,
because the DRC is not a place you generally
go for holidays. A few weeks before the first
time I had planned to go, my permission
was withdrawn due to security threats.
But I went the year after, in 2010, with a
local geology student. It was in a really remote
place; we went by foot for the last 25 kilometres
because there was no way to approach the
structure with a four-wheeled car. On the
second day, we found shatter cones. I have a
picture where I’m smiling because I know at
that moment that I have discovered impact
crater number 182. I went back again in 2013
to find more rocks that we could use to try to
date the crater.
It sounds like quite an adventure.
Later on, I wanted to write my name on a
tree in the centre of the crater. I was using
my geological hammer to knock the letters
Crater lakes on the
Portuguese island
São Miguel (top);
a partly frozen crater
on the Estonian island
Saaremaa (bottom left);
Wolfe Creek meteorite
impact crater in Western
Australia (bottom right)
into the wood – and when I struck the tree
a snake fell out of the branches above and
onto the student standing next to me.
Thankfully he was fine.
What have we found out about that crater?
First of all, we have confirmed that it is an
impact crater, a rather large one, and still to
date the only confirmed impact crater in the
whole of central Africa. We have been working
to date it and that’s taken a very long time. We
know that the rocks in which the crater formed
are at maximum about 575 million years old,
so the crater must be younger than that. To
be able to put an exact age on a crater is quite
hard because you need to find a rock that was
completely melted during the impact, which
allows atoms to diffuse between the rock and
its environment so that its radioactive clock
was reset. We are in the process of publishing
our latest results on this – it takes a lot of
careful work to be sure that we date the impact
and not something else, but we think that we
have a good age for it now. ❚
Joshua Howgego is a features
editor at New Scientist
6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 47
Features

Rio,
bravo
Fabian Federl heads
into one of Rio de
Janeiro’s largest
favelas to discover
how a retired
German dentist and
a group of children
have become
a crucial part of
Brazil’s fight against
infectious disease

V
ITÓRIA LAÍS DE SOUZA GOMES, a shy
14-year-old with long, dark hair, pulls

ALL IMAGES: KRISTIN BETHGE

aside cables hanging from a lamp post
and climbs on a platform with a view over her
neighbourhood, Complexo da Maré. With more
than 130,000 residents, this sprawl of 16 favelas,
or slums, is one of the largest and most densely
packed parts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Vitória jumps down and leads me into a
house. It is cramped, humid and hot. Vitória
pushes past her mother, into the kitchen,
and pulls out an empty margarine tub from
a drawer – it is her mosquito breeding station.
The tub is home to Aedes aegypti, the
species that transmits several viral infections,
including dengue, chikungunya and Zika.
Dengue is the fastest spreading viral disease on
the planet, with a 30-fold rise in incidence over
the past 50 years. About 390 million people
get infected each year and tens of thousands
of those die. Brazil is the worst affected country
in the world, and Complexo da Maré, with its
densely packed houses and poor sanitation,
is particularly vulnerable to outbreaks.
Which begs the question as to why Vitória
is encouraging the insects that can spread
Complexo da Maré,
home to 130,000
people, is one of
Brazil’s largest
the disease to live in her home. But Vitória’s collections of favelas
mosquitoes are different. Her breeding station
is part of a unique anti-mosquito movement
dreamed up by a German dentist and brought
to life with the help of the Brazilian Ministry
of Health and hundreds of local children. From
such humble beginnings, it is now a crucial
part of the country’s most successful anti-
dengue programme, one that could inspire
much-needed action to save lives globally.
I am in Complexo da Maré to find out
more, to discover how this movement is
setting an example to other hard-to-access
neighbourhoods on how to defeat deadly

48 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022

viral infections – in Brazil and beyond.
The story starts in 2005 with Norbert
bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis into
parts of the river closest to where the children “In Rio,
Lehmann. The recently retired German dentist
was visiting a clinic in Complexo da Maré,
reported the plagues of insects. The mosquito
larvae ate these bacteria, which made them
the help
donating dental X-ray equipment and offering
free treatment. During his time there, a patient
infertile, and the problem was solved. You
don’t need to treat the disease if you can
of local
told him a neighbour’s child was sick. Lehmann
told her to bring the child to the clinic. “The
control the carriers.
He was convinced that children could be
children
next morning there was screaming outside the
clinic,” he says. The child had died in the night
the answer to Complexo da Maré’s mosquito
problem too. Much of the neighbourhood is
has been
from severe fever and internal bleeding due to
dengue. “This death left a mark,” says Lehmann.
controlled by gun-wielding gangs, meaning
adults who don’t live there are unable to
essential”
Dengue, Zika and chikungunya are all come in to educate the community about
treatable if you catch them early enough and mosquitoes. But there were hundreds of
you have access to the right medicine. But in children who could walk freely around the
parts of Rio de Janeiro, particularly in the city’s neighbourhoods. Over the next decade,
favelas, where houses pile on top of each other Lehmann raised money in Germany, and
and alleys turn into tunnels, infections spread in 2014, he hired social workers within the
easily and healthcare is hard to come by.
“Dengue originates where people live densely,”
says Claudia Codeço, head of virology at
Brazilian health institute Fiocruz. “Once the
virus goes around, you can’t get it contained.”
Vitória tells me about a neighbour who was
expanding his second floor. She says he went
away for a few days and it started to rain. Water
collected in a tarpaulin on the construction
site, mosquitoes laid eggs in it and thousands
of larvae hatched. “First Russo was sick, then
Nordestina,” says Vitória, using nicknames
for those affected, “then Juju, then Pardo.”
Within a week, everyone in the alley was sick.
When Lehmann returned to his home city
of Karlsruhe, which sits beside the Rhine river,
he thought a lot about the impact of dengue
that he had witnessed. He then remembered
a project around Karlsruhe in the 1960s whose A resident places a
name translates as “the association to combat mosquito-breeding
the mosquito plague”. “When I was a kid, I tub in their home
played soccer on the floodplains of the Rhine,”
says Lehmann. “There was always this time
of day, half past four, when the sky would
turn black and you’d be standing in a cloud
of mosquitoes.” It was the reason why the
area was deemed uninhabitable back then.
Lehmann recalls the unique way that
the mosquitoes were eventually controlled.
Children who still went to the floodplains
to play football told their parents about the
areas most affected. They, in turn, alerted local Residents of Complexo
administrators. Helicopters – borrowed from da Maré live in densely
the likes of fire departments and the police – packed homes where
were used to throw crushed ice containing the disease can spread fast

6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 49

 complex to educate children about the role of
mosquitoes in spreading disease. The children
walked through the favelas, explaining to
other children and adults about how to stop
the spread: don’t leave water standing, check
surfaces after rain and so on. They educated
communities about the symptoms of disease,
where to get tested and when symptoms
become critical. The campaign was called
Heroes Against Dengue, and word spread.
Within months, dozens of children, including
Vitória, had joined up.
It is difficult to say how successful the
campaign was at this point, as collecting
data from inside complexes like Maré is
challenging. However, just before the 2014
men’s football World Cup in Brazil, Zika broke
out across Rio. Thousands of people fell ill Researchers at
and hundreds of children were later born Fiocruz breed
with neurological conditions directly related vaccinated
to infection with the virus responsible. The mosquitoes, above,
government didn’t collect official figures which are kept in
from Complexo da Maré at this time, but gauze-covered
according to anecdotal data from researchers cages, far right. A
at Fiocruz, doctors in the neighbourhood capsule of mosquito
and in hospitals in the region saw fewer eggs vaccinated
cases from within Maré than expected. against dengue, right
Yet education can only take you so far in the
fight against vector–borne diseases. In 2014,
an opportunity arose to possibly wipe out
these diseases altogether. Shortly after the
World Cup, Brazil began small trials of an anti-
mosquito programme using what is known
as the Wolbachia method. It involves infecting
mosquitoes with a naturally occurring
“At half past This technique was originally developed
by the World Mosquito Program in the early
bacterium called Wolbachia from a fruit fly.
This suppresses the dengue virus and others
four, the sky 2000s. In 2018, Australia released 3 million
mosquitoes inoculated with Wolbachia
in two ways. First, the bacteria occupy the part
of cells that viruses use to reproduce. “There
would turn in three North Queensland communities.
By 2021, populations of mosquitoes had
is competition in the cell between the virus
and Wolbachia,” says Wesley Oliveira at Fiocruz.
black with been suppressed by up to 97 per cent,
virtually wiping out dengue in areas
If a mosquito infected with both the dengue
virus and Wolbachia bites you, the risk it will
a cloud of where the technique was most successful.
I visit Fiocruz, situated on the edge of
transmit dengue is only 5 per cent, compared mosquitoes” the Complexo da Maré, where Brazil’s own
with an 80 per cent chance from the bites of Wolbachia mosquitoes are bred. Inside its
mosquitoes infected with the dengue virus insectarium, gauze cages house millions of
alone. Second, when Wolbachia-infected males mosquitoes. White nets streaked with red hang
mate with uninfected females, those females from the ceiling – they are soaked in human
will lay eggs that won’t hatch. When females blood, fresh from a blood bank, which female
with Wolbachia mate, their offspring are mosquitoes must feed on to form their eggs.
born with the bacterium, no matter whether On the countertop, researchers place
the male had it or not. Gradually, the entire a nutritious mix of fish and liver meal,
population of mosquitoes become affected. charcoal and yeast into thimble-sized holes.

50 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022


They drizzle mosquito eggs taken from
the Wolbachia mosquitoes on top. These
will be manufactured into thousands of
small, black capsules.
Having seen promising results in smaller
trials in 2014, three years later, Fiocruz began
a large-scale deployment of these capsules
in breeding stations in parks, railway stations
and residential areas around Rio and the
neighbouring city of Niterói. An analysis of
the project, which compared the incidence
of disease in areas of Niterói where capsules
were deployed with an untreated control zone,
showed a 69 per cent reduction in dengue, a
56 per cent fall in chikungunya and 37 per cent
less Zika. The preliminary data suggested that
the numbers would be comparable in Rio –
with a few exceptions: favela neighbourhoods,
including Complexo da Maré.
Dengue defenders
In 2019, Oliveira showed Lehmann Fiocruz’s
most recent data. Lehmann was curious
as to why the programme wasn’t working
in Maré. Oliveira said his researchers had
tried to get vaccinated mosquitoes into the
neighbourhood. They installed breeding
stations in schools and clinics, but those
are often on the borders of the favelas. They
had even tried to blow the mosquitoes over
the barricaded areas of the neighbourhood
with a long pipe. It was out of the question
to ask the drug gangs that control Maré for
permission to go further in, said Oliveira.
With mosquitoes not tending to spread too
far from where they breed, Maré remained
undersupplied. When Lehmann heard
Oliveira’s explanations, he said that Heroes
Against Dengue may be able to help.
After their meeting, Lehmann asked
his heroes to help put mosquito eggs
in places around the favelas where they
knew mosquitoes liked to breed. Breeding
Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes has now
become popular, says Oliveira – parents call
Fiocruz because their children want a kit.
Vitória Laís de Souza Back in Vitória’s house, I watch as she fills
Gomes has been a a new margarine tub with water and places
key player in fighting two black capsules inside. Her mother helps
infectious diseases her punch holes in the lid with a screwdriver.
around her favela She carries the box to the entrance of her
home and stows it in the rafters. Later,
hundreds of mosquitoes fly through the holes.
Today, the Wolbachia programme is
considered the most successful anti-dengue
measure in Brazil, says Luciano Moreira, also
at Fiocruz, and Lehmann and his troop of
heroes are a big part of making it work. Dengue
outbreaks happen in waves, so figuring out
the incidence can be tricky, but cases seem
to be significantly down inside the favelas
and around the city more generally, he says.
In 2015, before the widespread deployment
of the inoculated mosquitoes, there were
18,070 officially recorded cases of dengue in
Rio de Janeiro. In 2017, this dropped to 3684,
and in 2021, there were 937.
The programme is now being exported to
other cities in Brazil, including Belo Horizonte,
Campo Grande, Petrolina and Maricá, as well
as to other countries, such as Indonesia. In
Belo Horizonte particularly, researchers will
probably encounter similar accessibility issues
as they faced in Rio, since a similar percentage
of its population live in favelas. The answer
is that, where necessary, Lehmann’s heroes
programme will be included in the plan.
“In Rio, the help of local children has been
essential,” says Oliveira. The approach is
already being replicated in other favelas
in Rio, such as Jacarézinho, one of the most
violent neighbourhoods in the country.
On my last day with Vitória, she packs a
small backpack and walks down an alley close
to her home. It has been raining, ankle-deep
puddles have formed in the asphalt, water
stands in plastic plates and old car tyres. She
kicks over every tin can she sees to pour out
the water. The wrong kind of mosquitoes
could be breeding in there.
Vitória strolls down the street, constantly
greeting people. She goes door to door every
week to educate people about mosquitoes.
A white container building looms in the
distance, a government health clinic. Just in
front are heavy concrete pillars, a barricade
set up by a drug gang. I stop. Young men with
guns strapped to their chest stand around.
On the tables in front of them lie a pile of drugs.
Vitória walks past the gunmen unimpressed,
bypassing the barricade. She is allowed through
because she is from Maré.
In the clinic grounds stands another table.
On this one are hundreds of bags of black
capsules. A crowd of people are waiting
for a medical appointment. Vitória hands
out dozens of mosquito kits that day. She
is incredibly proud of what she is doing,
she says. A 14-year-old-girl from a favela,
saving hundreds of lives. ❚
Fabian Federl is a journalist based
in Berlin. His trip was supported by
the US Pulitzer Center
6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 51
The back pages
Puzzles Almost the last word Tom Gauld for  Feedback Twisteddoodles
Try our crossword, How might space New Scientist Why roboticists for New Scientist
quick quiz and have gone from A cartoonist’s take find dead spiders Picturing the lighter
logic puzzle p53 finite to infinite? p54 on the world p55 truly gripping p56 side of life p56

The science of cooking

Some like it hot

Fermentation sounds daunting, but Sam Wong reveals how you
can use it to make hot sauces packed with flavourful compounds

HOT sauces are popular all over

the world. Many are produced
by fermentation, using
microorganisms to add depth of
flavour and create sauces offering
more than just a kick of chilli heat.
The burning sensation comes
from capsaicin, a molecule that
activates heat receptors. As Clare
Sam Wong is assistant news Wilson explained in her science of
editor and self-appointed gardening column a fortnight ago,
chief gourmand at Capsicum plants may have evolved
New Scientist. Follow the ability to produce capsaicin to
him @samwong1 deter mammals from eating them,
but our species has developed a
What you need perverse taste for the pain it brings.

300g red chillies, If you are following Clare’s tips
stalks removed for growing chillies at home, you
50g garlic, peeled might have a bumper crop ready
500ml water for turning into fermented hot
25g salt sauce. If not, making it with shop-
1 tbsp sugar bought chillies is just as rewarding.
1 tbsp cider vinegar The basic idea when fermenting
any kind of food is that you add
salt to encourage certain microbes
to grow and produce acid. The salt
and the acid inhibit the growth of
bacteria that cause food to spoil,
so fermented foods tend to keep
for many months.
In fermented cabbage dishes
like kimchi, bacteria that produce
lactic acid, such as Lactobacillus
and Leuconostoc, are key players
in the process. But this isn’t the
case when fermenting chillies,
according to a study by researchers
in China last year. They found that
acetic acid and malic acid were the
main acids in chilli fermentation.
The science of cooking The researchers found over 100
appears every four weeks volatile compounds – those that
are easily vaporised and reach our
Next week noses – in the fermented chillies.
Stargazing at home These included 43 esters, a class of
molecules known for their fruity
aromas, that became dramatically
more concentrated during the
fermentation process.
Through genomic analysis,
the researchers then identified
Rosenbergiella and Staphylococcus
as the most dominant types of
bacteria in the fermented samples,
but little is known about how they
contribute to flavour. They also
found a diverse range of fungi,
including the yeasts Hyphopichia,
Kodamaea, Meyerozyma and
Debaryomyces, which are found
in other fermented foods such
as sourdoughs and cider vinegar.
To make your own fermented
hot sauce, you can use any kind
of chillies you like – ideally ones
that haven’t been treated with
pesticides. It is a good idea to taste
them first rather than spend two
SHUTTERSTOCK/FOTEMA
weeks fermenting only to discover
that your sauce is too hot.
After removing the stalks
from your chillies, pack them
into a sterilised jar with the garlic.
Dissolve the salt in the water, then
pour this into the jar too, making
sure the chillies are submerged.
Now, seal the jar and leave it at
room temperature for one to
two weeks, opening it every
few days to let gas escape.
When the chillies taste sour,
your ferment is ready. Strain it,
reserving the liquid, then blend
the solids while adding enough
liquid back in to make a smooth
sauce. Add sugar and vinegar to
taste – then store in the fridge. ❚
These articles are
posted each week at
newscientist.com/maker

52 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022

The back pages Puzzles
Cryptic crossword #89 Set by Wingding
ACROSS
7 Cat starts to appreciate taste of fruit (6)
8 Included in talk, a new hydrocarbon (6)
9 Ring inside little 21 inhabitant (4)
10 Iterates original essay (8)
11 Theory about mishaps: clumsy
lad’s possessed by pig (4,3)
13 Relative mostly making soup (5)
15 Perceive meaning (5)
17 Swimmer’s pod frolicking in story (7)
20 Most clever fish briefly getting
ahead of menace (8)
21/5 Down Insect darkens top
when stressed (4,6)
23 Rodent returned waterproof
coat – cars drive over it (6)
24 Witty remark to slay record label (6)
Our crosswords are now solvable online
newscientist.com/crosswords
Scribble
zone
Answers and
the next quick
crossword
next week
DOWN
1 Double nitric oxide? That’s
not acceptable (2-2)
2 Insect’s iron-carriers out of energy (6)
3 See 4 Down
4/3 Down Having eaten nothing, superhero
follows server who’s lost one insect (5,7)
5 See 21 Across
6 Refined oil is not sugar (8)
12 Cost more than chief executive (8)
14 Johnson glugs wine with last of
cheese – it’s a distraction (7)
16 21 inhabitant is quiet, softly
going around edge (6)
18 Transform dog at start of experiment (6)
19 21 inhabitant’s drain to the ear (5)
22 Physicist dropping on 21 inhabitant (4)
Quick quiz #163
1 Which force dictates the
direction of a hurricane’s spin?
2 What is the densest
moon in our solar system?
3 Physeteridae, Kogiidae and Ziphiidae
are all families in which group of animals?
4 How many prime numbers
are there between 1 and 100?
5 Halophiles are organisms that can exist
in areas with high concentrations of what?
Answers on page 55
Puzzle
set by Rob Eastaway
#179 Martian food
It is the year 2100 and the Mars pioneers
have built an agri-bubble in which they
will be able to cultivate their own food.
The crop is a form of grass that grows at
a steady rate and can be harvested and
turned into nutritious protein snacks (yum!).
Now it is time to populate the planet.
Scientists have figured out that if there are
40 adults living in the bubble, the crop will
only feed them for 20 days. However, with
only 20 adults, the crop will keep them
going for 60 days – so half as many adults
can survive for three times as long! Why?
Because without overharvesting, the
crop is able to replenish itself.
Of course, the pioneers want a food
supply that keeps the population
sustained indefinitely. Based on the
numbers above, how many people
should be in the first Mars cohort?
Solution next week
6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 53
 The back pages Almost the last word
Infinity origin
The universe could be infinite
in size, but how is it logically
possible to attain an infinite
size from a finite initial state?
Antonio Padilla
University of Nottingham, UK
If the universe has only existed
for a finite time, then we couldn’t
actually have an infinitely large
universe emerging from a finite
initial state.
However, we don’t know if the
initial state of the universe was
finite or not. It could have been
infinite from the very beginning.
There is no cosmological
observation that rules this out.
The cosmic microwave
background radiation encodes
information about the shape of
the universe, but this still leaves
us with a number of possible
scenarios. The universe could
be finite like a gigantic sphere,
doughnut-shaped (a torus) or an
infinite, three-dimensional plane
or a saddle shape. We just don’t
know. All we know is that it is big!
“The universe could be
finite like a gigantic
sphere, or doughnut-
shaped, or it could be
like an infinite, three-
dimensional plane”
Eric Kvaalen
Les Essarts-le-Roi, France
It is a loaded question! No one
says that the universe is infinite
now but started from a finite
initial state. The problem is that we
can’t know whether the universe
is finite or infinite. We can’t see
beyond a certain distance, which
has been increasing ever since
the big bang.
As far as we can see, the number
of galaxies per unit volume seems
constant, independent of distance.
It is hard to imagine space just
ending somewhere.
An alternative, spatially finite
universe, proposed by Einstein,
is one that is like the surface of
a sphere but three-dimensional.
54 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
Does it make a difference to
jet lag if you travel eastwards
rather than to the west?
Bryn Glover
Ripon, North Yorkshire, UK
I feel that a problem arises when
the words “finite” and “infinite”
occur in the same sentence linked
by nothing more than a mere verb.
A finite universe is a tangible
entity that can be measured and
defined. Infinity isn’t a number
or a quantity, it is a concept that is
useful in mathematics, so long as a
SHUTTERSTOCK/ALEX BRYLOV
means can be identified for finally
eliminating it in calculations.
@LandwehrJobs
via Twitter
I picture it like this: the universe is
This week’s new questions like a balloon and while you travel
from the centre to the fringe, it
In a spin Is jet lag worse if you travel east rather than west? expands. So it looks like infinity.
Does going with or against the rotation of Earth have an At some point, it snapped back
impact? Grace, Lucy and Sam Liubinskas, Sydney, Australia and compressed all the matter
back in one tiny spot.
Hairy issue Why do humans have pubic hair, when other
“hairless” mammals, like pigs and elephants, manage @magnusiscariot
without it? Jim Stone, Great Hucklow, Derbyshire, UK via Twitter
The logical answer would be
that it isn’t possible. Either the
But there is no evidence of the expanded into infinite space while universe isn’t infinitely large or
curvature that model would entail. it was finite in size at its origins? was never in a finite initial state.
The answer to this might not Technically, we only see the
Hillary J. Shaw lie in the realm of physics, but universe as expanding from a
Newport, Shropshire, UK rather in semantics and our smaller state. Perhaps it is our
The universe could appear infinite cognitive ability to imagine understanding of finite and
if it is really the three-dimensional beyond our near environment. infinite that needs work.
surface of a very large, four- And what do we mean by
dimensional hypersphere. the universe? Here, the universe @PauloXR7
The pace of expansion would be wouldn’t be defined as the visible via Twitter
fast enough to preclude us “seeing one, rather as the potential If the universe were finite, then it
the back of our own heads”, as the everlasting empty space in would have an edge somewhere.
light travelling that way could all directions beyond the Ask yourself “what is on the other
never reach us. This would be visible universe. side of that edge”.
analogous to Earth’s 2D surface
appearing endless, as it is the Hector Ruiz Crocodile power
surface of a 3D sphere. El Monte, California, US
If the universe is infinite, then How do crocodiles maintain
Denis De Volder the statement “finite initial state” their explosive power despite
Paris, France is false – meaning that the big being motionless for long
First, we must answer the bang was just a part of the infinite periods, while if I am sedentary,
question: why wouldn’t it be state of the universe, not the my muscles weaken?
logical for the universe to have beginning of it.
Stephen Johnson
Want to send us a question or answer? Eugene, Oregon, US
Email us at lastword@newscientist.com Reptiles, such as crocodiles, and
Questions should be about everyday science phenomena mammals, such as humans, have
Full terms and conditions at newscientist.com/lw-terms two basic types of muscle fibre.
Tom Gauld
for New Scientist
Slow-twitch muscle fibres support
continual exercise and respond to
endurance training. Fast-twitch
muscle fibres support explosive
power and respond to short,
intense activity.
When humans are sedentary,
their slow-twitch fibres will, over
time, convert to become fast-
twitch. As an extreme example,
a person who is paralysed as a
result of spinal cord injury will
eventually convert their paralysed
muscles into almost 100 per cent
fast-twitch fibres.
Crocodiles only need fast-twitch
muscles to capture their prey.
As a consequence, their lifestyle
of mostly lying in wait for prey
works to their advantage.
In addition, they possess a form
of super-fast-twitch muscles in
their jaw to aid in applying a
very large, almost instant force
to anything they catch.
Finally, their legs and hips have
evolved to aid them in jumping
forward quickly.
What the author of this
question experiences when
they are sedentary is a loss of
“Crocodiles only need
fast-twitch muscles
to capture their prey,
so their lifestyle of
mostly lying in wait
for prey works well”
function in their slow-twitch
muscles, those which support
a continuous effort.
Mike Follows
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, UK
The secret of the explosive power
of crocodiles is their fast-twitch
muscles. Sprinters generally have
more fast-twitch muscle than
distance runners. The downside is
that sprinters – and crocodiles –
can’t sustain their high-power
output for long.
Ectotherms (cold-blooded
animals, which includes
crocodiles) generally feed
during the day when the higher
temperature enables their
muscles to function better. In
fact, crocodiles can have body
temperatures in excess of 30°C,
which is only a little lower than
ours (37°C) and they change
location to achieve this, for
example by basking in the sun.
They also don’t need to feed
as often because they don’t need
extra “fuel” to run an internal
heating system to keep their
bodies warm. Consequently, they
can sit and wait to ambush prey.
They are well-adapted for this,
but, size-for-size, the explosive
power of the crocodile is nothing
compared with a mantis shrimp.
This marine creature can punch
its prey with a force of more than
700 newtons, equivalent to over
1000 times its own weight.
Hinged clubs at the front
of its body, called dactyls, can
accelerate an astonishing 10,000
times faster than an object in free
fall to deliver a blow at speeds close
to 100 kilometres per second. This
is accomplished when the shrimp
transfers chemical potential
energy from its food into elastic
potential energy, using its muscles
to change the shape of part of its
exoskeleton. A latch releases the
stored energy. Humans achieve
the same effect with a crossbow. ❚
Answers
Quick quiz #163
Answers
1 The Coriolis force
2 Io, which orbits Jupiter
3 Whales
4 25
5 Salt
Quick crossword
#113 Answers
ACROSS 1 Planet of the Apes,
9 Roseola, 10 Beretta,
11 Goral, 12 Aleph-Zero,
13 Inland sea, 15 Deneb,
16 Eight, 18 Astronaut,
20 Antenatal, 23 Aural,
24 Crevice, 25 Stomach,
26 Nash equilibrium
DOWN 1 Peregrine falcon,
2 Austral, 3 Exoplanet,
4 Omaha, 5 Table salt, 6 Earth,
7 Pattern, 8 Star of Bethlehem,
14 Start menu, 15 Drop a bomb,
17 Gutters, 19 Air taxi,
21 Noise, 22 Lysol
#178 Hydra
Solution
The monster is completely tame
when all the heads show prime
numbers. We can factorise 418
as 2×11×19 and 651 as
3×7×31. This leaves 113 −
(2 + 11 + 19 + 3 + 7 + 31),
which is 40, so the remaining
heads must be prime numbers not
already used that sum to 40. The
only way to do this is as 17+23,
so the mystery third head must
have shown 17×23 = 391.
6 August 2022 | New Scientist | 55
The back pages Feedback
Dressing down
Time for elevenses – and what could
be nicer to go with this cuppa than a
cucumber sandwich slathered in
Miami chef Carly Pii’s proprietary
Pink Sauce?
Pii’s product launch wasn’t
the smoothest, according to the
Los Angeles Times. A couple of
misprints on her labelling left
purchasers with a 444-gram bottle
that provided “444 servings”. Just
how powerful is this condiment?
Too powerful for some: the dragon
fruit that lend the sauce its tang
and lurid colour act rather like
beetroot, and this distressed some
unsuspecting consumers, come
their next bowel movement. Pii duly
adjusted her formula, turning her
hot pink concoction into something
resembling Pepto-Bismol. But it
was the initial packaging for her
sauce (which arrived through the
post, during a heatwave, in plastic
bags instead of bottles) that caused
the most annoyance.
Such has been Pii’s savaging
on TikTok (including one
social media stunt in which a
“consumer” allegedly faked his own
death) that a counter-movement
has emerged, with champions
buying her entire stock. Meanwhile,
Pii has been on the case. “Y’all gotta
stop this negativity,” she said last
Thursday, in a YouTube video that
lasted a staggering 52 minutes.
Now that is what we call a riposte.
Wrapped up in the game
If this is the new face of consumer
activism, then no wonder
Manchester City Football Club are
keeping their supporters close.
The Verge reports on the limited
release of the club’s new smart
scarf, sporting wearable fitness
tracker-style biosensors to help
the organisation “shape more
curated, customized experiences
in the future” and “serve as a study
in shared passion”.
Giving a data-harvesting project
such a fulsome description feels
disingenuous to us. Feedback
prefers an altogether more
charming tale of intimacy from
56 | New Scientist | 6 August 2022
Twisteddoodles for New Scientist
Got a story for Feedback?
Send it to feedback@newscientist.com or New Scientist,
Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT
Consideration of items sent in the post will be delayed
afar, courtesy of IFL Science. On
the morning of 19 May 1845, an
expedition led by John Franklin
set sail to find the Northwest
Passage linking the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans. The expedition
vanished. Five years later, Richard
Collinson and others set out to
find Franklin and his doomed
crew. For all the while they were
away, from 1850 to 1855,
mysterious ads appeared in the
UK in The Times newspaper,
written in a code that remained
unbroken for 170 years. Now,
cryptographers Elonka Dunin,
Klaus Schmeh and A. J. Jacobs have
used the Marryat Signal Code,
used by ships to send encrypted
messages to each other using
flags, to decode the ads.
They turn out to be tender
private messages between
Collinson expedition members
and their families – the
assumption being that no matter
how far they travelled, they would
never be far from a copy of The
Times. “Do write a few lines
darling, please,” one message
reads. “I have been very far from
happy since you went away.”
Perverse incentive
This is the sort of family sentiment
Feedback can get behind; less so
the bug (that games company
Electronic Arts is even now
frantically patching) that has the
avatars of The Sims 4 pining for
daddy – and not in a good way,
according to The Sun.
A “wants and fears” system,
introduced with the game’s newest
expansion pack, makes it easier for
players to fulfil their sims’ everyday
desires – one of which is to kiss
and date those closest to them.
Unfortunately, the new system is
ignorant of the game’s long-
standing prohibitions around
intra-family relationships.
So sims have been pining away,
unable to comprehend why their
nearest and dearest won’t date
them. On Twitter, an Electronic Arts
team member has assured us that
this “is something we know about,
we’ve reproduced ourselves, we’re
working on it”, which is a mite less
reassuring than perhaps intended.
Illegal move
Then again, the company’s evident
goodwill contrasts markedly with
the response Sergey Smagin at the
Russian Chess Federation gave a
Russian state-owned news agency,
after a chess robot seized and
broke a 7-year-old’s finger during
this July’s Moscow Open.
The Guardian reports that
Smagin said the incident was
“a coincidence”, the child had
“violated” safety rules and the
robot was “absolutely safe”.
(The boy is fine, though he
finished the competition wearing
a cast.) Sergey Lazarev, president of
the Moscow Chess Federation, was
more forthcoming to the TASS
news agency. Only a little, mind:
“This is, of course, bad,” he said.
Dead wringers
Feedback advises making robots of
more forgiving materials. No sooner
said than done, going by IEEE
Spectrum’s breathless description
of the latest in hydraulic gripper
technology: the dead spider.
“Necrobotics” is all the rage,
following the publication of a paper
by researchers at Rice University
in Houston, Texas. Exploiting the
way spiders control their limbs by
adjusting blood pressure through an
internal valve system (which is why
a dead spider’s legs curl up – there is
no pressure to balance the force of
the flexor muscles), the team has
been injecting air into euthanised
wolf spiders and using them to lift
loads 1.3 times their own weight.
Grotesque it may be, but
Feedback is even now fashioning
a tiny chess set.  ❚